Within the months after a 2018 Supreme Courtroom decision opened the door for states to legalize sports activities betting inside their borders, giddy lawmakers throughout the nation couldn’t transfer shortly sufficient. Nobody needed to overlook out on the billions of {dollars} in tax income that the excessive courtroom had abruptly positioned inside their attain—or, worse but, to observe that simple cash go to neighboring states whose leaders had the presence of thoughts to maneuver first. Inside a month of the choice, Delaware Gov. John Carney guess $10 on a Phillies sport—the primary authorized single-game sports activities guess outdoors of Nevada.
Many states had been extra involved with getting sportsbooks on-line in time for a big-ticket occasion (the Tremendous Bowl, March Insanity) than constructing an infrastructure to control the multibillion-dollar trade—a dynamic that journalist Danny Funt details in his guide Everyone Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports activities Playing. Lawmakers in some states even passed legal guidelines authorizing sports activities playing earlier than the Supreme Courtroom determined Murphy v. NCAA, so that they’d be prepared to leap after a good ruling.
Eight years later, it’s clear that this gold rush has had (and I’m being diplomatic right here) some negative consequences. Sports activities media retailers have turn out to be hopelessly intertwined with playing behemoths keen to show extra followers into paying prospects. Athletes who don’t carry out to bettors’ satisfaction are sometimes subjected to racist abuse, demise threats, or some mixture thereof. And playing habit has spiked, due to the proliferation of app-based cell betting that permits customers to get their fixes anytime, anyplace.
A 2025 study discovered that web searches for assist with playing habit elevated 23% between 2018 and June 2024, and that they surged extra with the arrival of on-line sportsbooks than they did when brick-and-mortar casinos opened.
Over the previous few years, a collection of high-profile scandals have demonstrated the extent to which legalization has warped the precise video games on which persons are betting all this cash. In 2024, the NBA issued a lifetime ban to Toronto Raptors ahead Jontay Porter for his half in a conspiracy during which he pulled himself early from video games to make sure that “below” bets on his efficiency would hit. Miami Warmth guard Terry Rozier was implicated in a similar scheme final 12 months, as had been two Cleveland Guardians pitchers who had been charged with rigging ball-or-strike bets on particular pitches in change for money bribes.
Then, earlier this month, federal prosecutors named 39 gamers throughout 17 groups who had been allegedly a part of a point-shaving ring that mounted males’s school basketball video games throughout the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons. Based on the indictment, bettors provided gamers bribes within the low 5 figures to underperform in agreed-upon video games, after which wagered closely on outcomes that they had good motive to consider would go their manner.
Leagues and sportsbooks usually body corruption as uncommon and make examples of those that are concerned in it. However the mere data that scandals like this exist can throw your entire enterprise into doubt: In case you are a gambler who’s offended a couple of dangerous guess, it’s very simple to marvel in case you had been cheated by perpetrators who had been simply fortunate sufficient to not get caught.
A brand new bill in Tennessee, the place residents wagered $1.3 billion on sports activities over a two-month interval final 12 months, is possibly probably the most vital effort but to retreat from the established order. Launched by a pair of Democratic lawmakers, state Rep. John Ray Clemmons and state Sen. Jeff Yarbro, the proposal would ban state-licensed sportsbooks from taking bets from people who find themselves on the campuses of public schools and universities, in addition to from folks at venues the place these colleges’ groups are taking part in video games.
Sportsbooks use the geolocation capabilities of smartphones to find out app customers’ eligibility, so logistically talking, rejecting bets from telephones which can be situated inside newly designated restricted areas wouldn’t be particularly sophisticated. Faculties and universities would even be required to dam folks from accessing on-line sportsbooks whereas related to campus networks.
A handful of states have beforehand imposed modest limits on betting on school sports activities—for instance, banning proposition bets on school athletes, or prohibiting wagering on in-state college groups. The scope of Clemmons and Yarbro’s proposal is broader: It might stop folks on campus from putting any sort of sports activities guess, school or in any other case.
The rationales for focusing on restrictions in school college students are simple: Playing habit has hit younger folks arduous, and younger males the toughest. A Pew Analysis Middle study final 12 months discovered that 31% of adults between ages 18 and 29 had guess on sports activities within the earlier 12 months—probably the most of any age group. A 2023 survey commissioned by the NCAA discovered that greater than 1 / 4 of college-age adults had positioned a guess on-line, and total, 58% had guess in some kind. In 2024, a Pennsylvania habit therapist told 60 Minutes a couple of troubling new archetype of affected person he’d encountered in recent times: school college students who gamble away their federal scholar mortgage cash.
Clemmons echoed many of those considerations in an e mail to me, explaining that he was motivated by rising addiction rates amongst younger folks, sportsbooks’ efforts to target younger folks with promoting, the continuing harassment of student-athletes, and “a need to forestall college students from shedding their mother and father’ hard-earned cash to sportsbooks.” In case you are a policymaker trying to enact extra strong protections for these whom the info exhibits are most weak, “the people who find themselves bodily current on a university campus” is a reasonably good place to begin.
On the similar time, the invoice’s parameters exhibit the challenges inherent in making an attempt to offer oversight to an trade that has, to this point, been allowed to set a brand new land-speed file yearly. Bettors have lengthy demonstrated their willingness to maneuver round as a way to place bets. In his guide, Funt writes that earlier than New York approved sports activities betting, New York Metropolis residents would merely stroll throughout the George Washington Bridge till their telephones registered their presence in New Jersey, the place betting was authorized. Given what we find out about how habit works and the way prevalent it’s, I’m unsure that requiring school college students to cross the road as a way to place a wager goes to be, within the scheme of issues, a big deterrent.
It’s additionally price considering all of the folks and behaviors to whom this regulation wouldn’t apply. It doesn’t have an effect on non-public colleges, which implies that whereas college students on the College of Tennessee could be quickly locked out of their FanDuel accounts, college students at Vanderbilt may not even notice if and when a ban takes impact. It doesn’t have an effect on non-public property, which implies that college students who dwell off campus could be free to proceed wagering from the consolation of their couches. It doesn’t have an effect on entry to federally regulated prediction websites like Kalshi, which perform as backdoor sportsbooks accessible to anybody 18 and older.
Since Tennessee already prohibits anybody below 21 from betting with state-licensed sportsbooks, the individuals who could be barred from wagering below this regulation and who will not be barred from wagering below current regulation are, principally, followers at sure sporting occasions, and school juniors and seniors at public colleges, in the event that they occur to be on college property at that second.
By e mail, Clemmons famous the legislature’s restricted jurisdiction over nonpublic property, and he asserted that geo-targeting campuses and sports activities venues “appears the best, authorized option to accomplish our major goals.” In response to my query concerning the deserves of, for instance, elevating the minimal betting age or barring school college students from betting no matter their bodily location, Clemmons mentioned that in the event that they move this regulation and decide that “extra motion is critical,” they’ll “actually look to have these discussions.”
I don’t imply to counsel that lawmakers contemplating responses like this one to the varied crises earlier than them are falling down on the job. When there may be this a lot proof over this a few years that the post-Murphy free-for-all is ruining this many lives, I would favor folks in energy do what they’ll to mitigate the hurt somewhat than shrug their shoulders and do nothing.
I’m merely saying that at this level, eight years after the Supreme Courtroom empowered the playing trade to start swallowing sports activities complete, it will be actually, actually difficult for lawmakers, in Tennessee or anyplace else, to begin placing the proverbial toothpaste again within the tube.
That is largely the results of the states’ personal selections: They may have proceeded extra cautiously after Murphy, by extra aggressively limiting the swimming pools of eligible bettors, or imposing extra onerous tobacco-style restrictions on sportsbook promoting, or just deciding to attend a short time earlier than placing digital casinos in tens of millions of pockets. However they needed the cash that might include performing quick.
Now, they’re paying the true worth.
