The Over-Under on Sports Betting

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
​author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick 

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Can you guess the percentage of people who have placed a sports bet within the past year? Hint, it’s roughly the same number as those who have gotten a tattoo, run a 5K race, or been in a wedding party. The answer, one in five, may seem high, but the gaming industry is growing by leaps and bounds, which calls for a timeout to ask: Should we be all-in on sports betting?

It’s the eve of March Madness, the NCAA Division I basketball tournament that’s one of the biggest sports seasons of the year and one of the biggest sports betting opportunities. Estimates are that $3.1 billion was legally wagered on March Madness 2025 – a little less than the $3.3 billion GPD of Belize. This year’s betting will likely easily eclipse 2025’s.
 
Taking a broader view, in 2017, legal sports betting in the U.S. was mainly confined to Nevada and totaled about $4.27 billion. The following year the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal law that prohibited sports gambling, which “opened the floodgates to [the] legalized sports-betting industry” and “paved the way for meteoric growth in legal sports betting.”
 
With 13 states allowing active sports betting in 2019, the total handle, or amount wagered, rose to $13 billion. By the end of 2021, the number of legal states had doubled to 26 and wagers had grown to $58 billion. In 2025, the handle hit $165 billion – larger than the $154.5 billion GDP of Kuwait.
 
Of course, the legalization of sports betting has been its main enabler, but what other factors have contributed to its extremely fast ascent?  A few key influences have been:

• Online and Mobile Options: The vast majority of sports bets are placed online (~95%). Apps on mobile devices, such as those of BetMGM, Caesars Sportsbook, and DraftKings, have made it very easy for people to “bet anywhere, anytime, [as] these apps blur the boundaries of when and where gambling happens.”

• Partnerships with Teams: Most major professional sports teams have signed deals with betting companies. A few specific examples are: New York Yankees and San Antonio Spurs – Bally Bet Sports & Casino;  Philadelphia 76ers and  Pittsburgh Steelers – BetMGM; New York Mets and Philadelphia Eagles – Caesars Sportsbook; Detroit Pistons and Chicago Bulls – BetRivers.
• Advertising: Promotions for these betting companies and others are ubiquitous. The firms frequently air commercials during professional sports contests. Viewers also often can spot signage for the companies inside the stadiums and along the courts where athletes compete.
• Endorsers: As in many product categories, celebrity endorsements seem to be very effective for betting companies, hence firms such as BetMGM partner with A-list actors like Jamie Foxx and Jon Hamm. Professional sports leagues generally prohibit their current players from endorsing gaming apps; however, one notable exception is the NBA, which has allowed LeBron James to serve as a spokesperson for DraftKings. Otherwise, betting firms have been very successful attracting many of professional sports’ top retired athletes including, Shaquille O’Neal, Jerry Rice, Wayne Gretzky, Mike Tyson, Peyton Manning, Connor McDavid, Barry Sanders, David Ortiz, Marshawn Lynch, Drew Brees, Charles Barkley, and many more.
• Variety of Bets: The sheer number of wagering options also makes it likely that a person will find a bet that beckons them. Betting on just the outcome of a game now seems passé thanks to sports betting apps that allow users to make microbets, or bets on “events that are resolved quickly” like how far an MLB player will hit a homerun or whether two NBA teams’ halftime scores will total more than 110 points.

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In short, sports betting companies have done a great job marketing their product. They’ve made wagering extremely accessible, easy, and attractive.
 
That was a brief rundown of how sports betting has raced to become a $165 billion industry. By 2030, sports wagering is projected to reach $256.5 billion and by 2035, $325.7 billion – more than Peru’s $318.5 billion GDP, the 48th largest in the world.
 
Let this sink in: If sports betting were a country, only 47 nations’ economies would be larger.
 
Economic growth is often a good thing, correlating with higher employment, greater variety of products, better infrastructure, and enhanced public services. However, will so much given to gambling equal greater good?
 
Is wagering that sports betting will produce good outcomes a winning bet?
 
Despite the great momentum gambling has gained, there have been very notable skeptics. One of them is someone who knows sports better than most – legendary sports broadcaster Bob Costas. When asked about sports betting in a July 2025 interview, he warned that some people will become addicted and lives will be ruined. He saw that destructive power firsthand through his own father’s sports gambling addiction.
 
Costas also reminded us that the house always wins: “It’s inevitable if in fact as a group and over time gamblers didn’t lose more than they win, then no back alley crap game, no casino in Atlantic City or Vegas, no racetrack, and now Bet MGM, Draft Kings, whatever it is, would ever exist.”
 
I share Costa’s concerns, which I’ve described a few times in articles such as one about a major restaurant chain embracing sports gaming and another about universities partnering with betting firms.
 
In those pieces, I offered statistics related to gambling’s often addictive grip, and I shared the story of a woman I interviewed whose father’s sports gambling addiction broke up their family and left him in need of his daughter’s financial and other support decades later.
 
I believe Costa’s and my views are valid, but at the same time I realize we’re not young, as are the individuals who seem to be the main target market for sports gambling: Gen Zs and Millennials. Also, among them, men are more likely to engage in betting than are women.
 
In a recent marketing course, during the semester’s final class period, a conversation about ethics turned to sports betting. Over the years, I’ve been privileged to moderate many engaging student discussions, but this one truly took on a life of its own. For perhaps 20 minutes and without my prodding, students from around the room passionately argued for and against the activity. I kept silent until the end when I finally needed to ‘call time’ because of the end of class; otherwise, the debate might still be going!
 
I recently reached out to two of the participants in that conversation, asking if they would be willing to share their perspectives on sports betting for this piece. Most students in that class were Gen Z men, and both of these students are part of the young male target market gaming firms like BetMGM and DraftKings covet.
 
Dane Mark, a sophomore finance major and sports fan, expresses concern for the integrity of the games, citing the recent high-profile case of Cleveland Guardian Emanuel Clase who allegedly altered pitches in 48 contests for the benefit of bettors. Mark also fears for the safety of players, such as those on men’s Division I basketball teams: Over a third report harassment by bettors.
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However, what weighs heaviest on Mark’s mind are the many people who unwittingly fall into gambling addiction, “throwing money on longshots” because they believe “a huge win is coming.” Mark maintains that even those who set limits on how much they’ll wager can easily succumb to the illusion that they’ll win back money lost. This common rationalization, he contends, is truly “dangerous to people’s lives.”
 
Jed Colyer, a junior accounting major, shares many of Mark’s concerns about the nature of sports betting, agreeing that it’s empty promise of “more, more, more” encourages addiction, as bettors lose their sense of how much is enough.
 
Colyer also cares about what  motivates people to gamble, which he views through the lens of his Christian faith and Bible passages such as 1 Timothy 6:9-10 and Matthew 25:14-30. While he believes money is an important God-given tool that serves useful purposes, he sees gambling  as a “misuse of the tool,” stemming from a fixation on wealth and being rich – preoccupations that ultimately lead to personal “ruin and destruction.”
 
Admittedly, Mark and Colyer represent one side of the debate about sports betting. Also in their class were several students, mainly men, who offered rational arguments in support of gambling, such as:

• Personal choice for entertainment
• Ability to bet responsibly
• Positive economic impact

 
Sports betting is already very widespread and growing rapidly, which means profound impact on even larger numbers of people. For these reasons, it’s important to invite the perspectives of individuals living at the frontlines of the trend – young men, particularly ones like Mark and Colyer who have shown the ability to step back from the legal context, marketing messages, and social pressure and apply moral reasoning.
 
What does it mean to “gamble responsibly” – an admonishment that many betting companies make but do little to unpack?
 
Likewise, what does the need for this upfront warning suggest about the activity and the probability that users will suffer financially, socially, or in other ways? Snack food can become a vice for some, but potato chip marketers don’t need to warn us to “eat responsibly.”
 
Perhaps I’ll be persuaded by other arguments in the future, but for now the risks of sports betting to individuals, organizations, and society seem to outweigh entertainment and economic rewards. To encourage gambling on games is a bet on Single-Minded Marketing.
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