Opinion

The lead-up to Super Bowl 56 thrust sports betting into the public light. And as any gambling historian can tell you, the adage that all press is good press doesn’t apply to gambling.

The COVID 19 pandemic has helped spur mobile sports betting in the US, but the opposite may be true for online casinos. Rather than highlighting the benefits of online casino gambling, COVID has allowed one of the key issues thwarting legalization efforts to linger: cannibalization.

Nearly two-thirds of US states have legalized sports betting in the last few years. Many of those states legalized online sports betting. That may not seem like a big deal, but ask any longtime industry follower, and they’ll tell you how out of character it is for a state to legalize any form of online…

Marketing gambling as entertainment is a drum I have been banging for quite some time. That said, I’ve never been able to plainly explain my thoughts on the subject, despite spending several years mulling it over. After writing a column dissecting Jason Robins’ statements about what kind of customer DraftKings is interested in attracting, it…

A comment by DraftKings CEO Jason Robins has the gambling sphere in a tizzy. “This is an entertainment activity,” Robins said during the investor-focused Canaccord Genuity digital conference. “People who are doing this for profit are not the players we want.” And with that, cue the torches and pitchforks.

Gambling Twitter ended last week with a pithy but also interesting debate about gambling harm. Specifically, a comparison of the harm caused by sports betting vis-à-vis online casino games. Both products produce social harm, but is it equal?

Over the last five years, US residents have seen a steady stream of new legal online gambling options. The current increase in gambling options rivals the casino boom of the early and mid-1990s. From 1978 to that time, customers had two choices, Atlantic City or Las Vegas. By 1993 the number of states with legal…

It’s inevitable. Every season, there is a string of bad calls that significantly impact the outcome of sporting events. It’s also unavoidable that these blown calls send sports fans (and sports bettors) into a tizzy.

The gambling industry is having a robust (and long overdue) responsible gambling discussion. One of the critical subplots in the conversation is means-testing or affordability checks and, by extension, reducing revenue gambling companies obtain from problem gamblers.

The US gambling landscape has changed significantly in the last five years. If we rewind the clock ten years, the landscape is even more unrecognizable. And understand, the industry’s evolution is in its early stages and far from over.