IN ATTORNEY GENERAL Andrea Campbell’s view, sports betting is not only a potentially hazardous vice in and of itself, but also a gateway to other addictive behavior – especially if the gamblers start young. With former governor and current NCAA president Charlie Baker, who signed off on legalized sports betting in Massachusetts, sitting next to her, Campbell announced a partnership Thursday between government organizations and professional sports teams to combat the harms of youth sports gambling in the state.
“Think about putting an addictive product – gambling – on an very addictive device – your smartphone,” Campbell said at a press event announcing the partnership at TD Garden. “And we’ve gone from sports gambling being illegal nearly everywhere to being legal in dozens of states throughout the country in just a matter of a few years. We need to make sure that the attention paid to the NCAA and the professional sports leagues – the avalanche of advertising and the possibility of wagering on them – does not ensnare our young people into a cycle of problem gambling, law breaking, or addiction.”
The Youth Sports Betting Safety Coalition launched Thursday includes the attorney general’s office, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, the Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health, Civic Action Project, the NCAA, the Boston Red Sox, the Boston Bruins, the Boston Celtics, the New England Patriots, and the New England Revolution.
It plans to develop an “evidence-based” education, training, and health curriculum targeted at 12- to 20-year-olds. The professional sports teams and sports media partners will work to communicate the risks of youth gambling and “promote it being cool to wait to gamble,” said Marlene Warner, CEO of the Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health.
The council – a statewide nonprofit focused on problem gambling and advocacy – will oversee curriculum development. The details of the curriculum and its rollout are still a work in progress.
Addiction, Campbell and Warner noted, is a lifelong struggle. They described young people who rack up debt through their parents credit cards, who gamble away college funds, who fear going into school because of a bet gone wrong.
“The data tells us that young people who gamble are more likely to be dependent on alcohol and other substances, and to experience depression more than their peers that do not gamble,” Warner said. “These stories are gut wrenching, and even worse, you don’t have a ton of resources to help them.”
The US Supreme Court gave states the ability to legalize sports wagering in 2018, with Massachusetts quickly moving to welcome in the potentially lucrative business. According to a poll commissioned in 2021 by Plainridge Park Casino and Encore Boston Harbor prior to sports betting’s legalization in Massachusetts, 61 percent of the state strongly or somewhat supported the idea.
A national poll carried out last year by the University of Massachusetts Lowell found an even split on the issue, with 31 percent in favor and 31 percent opposed to legalized sports betting. Sports betting is already big business in the Commonwealth, taking in well over $5 billion from bettors since its launch in March 2023.
“We’ve entered what we are all describing as a new era of sports gambling in Massachusetts and throughout the country,” Campbell said. “In this new world, more than ever before, major sports events are now major betting events. Betting on a game, or even performances within a game, is just a swipe away on millions of phones throughout the Commonwealth.”
The state’s participation in the market through legalized taxable gambling operations means “we have a responsibility to make it as safe and as responsible as we can,” she said. “That work will be hard.”
Illegal gambling among young people has become a subject of deep concern for regulators. According to an NCAA survey released last year, sports wagering is “pervasive” among 18- to 22-year-olds, with 58 percent of that age group saying they have engaged in at least one sports betting activity.
“If you think kids under the age of 21 aren’t doing this, then you’re kidding yourself,” Baker said at Thursday’s announcement.
The focus on education – though gaming regulators and Campbell have also zeroed in on the proliferation of advertisements that young people might be exposed to – is an attempt to deal with the reality that illegal gaming sites and merely crossing the Massachusetts border are options for those under 21 who want to place bets.
“I happen to live literally 20 minutes from Seabrook, New Hampshire,” said Massachusetts gaming commissioner Brad Hill, “where any 18-year-old can go up and place a bet on a sporting event. Which means that I, as a commissioner, and my fellow commissioners, and the attorney general, and others have now come to understand that we need to capture the young people who are learning about gambling not only at the high school level, but middle school.”
Thursday’s event came one day after Baker called for states to prohibit “prop bets” on collegiate games. Props bets, or proposition bets, are wagers on individual players or specific events not directly connected to the outcome of the game. For instance, prop bets could focus on whether a player scores a certain number of points.
Baker said these bets contribute to hostile environments on college campuses, where young athletes can be targeted by classmates or bettors trying to get an edge or angered at a loss. But the former governor said he does not regret pushing for sports betting generally in the state.
“The bill we got back from Legislature had a nuanced approach to dealing with college sports but did not permit prop bets,” he told reporters. “And so we’re one of the 17 or 18 states that have legalized sports betting but have not legalized prop bets on collegiate sports, so I think we did the right thing.”
After Baker talked at length in response to questions about college athletes, Campbell reeled the conversation back.
“This is bigger than athletes,” she said. “This is bigger than college students, who of course, are not in this state at the age appropriate to place a bet. They can buy a lottery ticket, obviously, but they can’t place a bet. When we say we’re going back to middle school, there’s an intentionality around that, based on the behavior that we’re hearing from school administrators across the Commonwealth.”