Online Sports Gambling Common Among Young Men

By Matthew Chmu­ra | UConn Jour­nal­ism
Decem­ber 13, 2023

Jon­ah Duck­stein sat on the couch emo­tion­less star­ing at the TV at the head of the room and back to the floor. The room fell silent to give Duck­stein the head­space to com­pre­hend what had hap­pened. A few min­utes have gone by, and the room has remained silent, peo­ple in the room start to move around to try to break the ten­sion.

Final­ly, Duck­stein him­self opens his mouth and utters, “I am nev­er gam­bling again.” Duck­stein, a 21-year-old East­ern Con­necti­cut State Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent from Tol­land, Con­necti­cut is new to the gam­bling scene. How­ev­er, he knows about both the pos­i­tive and the neg­a­tive side of the gam­bling scene.

“I’ve expe­ri­enced some wins before but most of the time I lose, and it is very dis­cour­ag­ing.” The night before Duck­stein walked through what a typ­i­cal night of gam­bling looked like for him. He typ­i­cal­ly bets on foot­ball and uses around $50 a week from his work pay­check on his bets. In this case he bet $10 on five times to win, and the pay­out would be $105.

As the game was over Duck­stein was speech­less. Yet anoth­er bet lost. He would lat­er say that although he said he would nev­er gam­ble again, he gam­bled again the very next day.

Duck­stein rep­re­sents the broad­er prob­lem of sports gam­bling and how it can affect younger demo­graph­ics. When look­ing at the num­bers for sports gam­bling it is impor­tant to deci­pher what demo­graph­ic is respon­si­ble.

Accord­ing to a recent poll from lpsos.com, a glob­al mar­ket research firm, over 39 per­cent of peo­ple who active­ly gam­ble is under the age of thir­ty-five. This is by far the high­est age demo­graph­ic of those that gam­ble, and the poll also shows that white men these ages gam­ble the most out of any oth­er demo­graph­ic group.

This demon­strates to the state and the pub­lic who the tar­get­ed mar­ket is for gam­bling and who the new laws affect the most. This also por­trays how will­ing younger peo­ple are to spend mon­ey on gam­bling and the prob­lems that it could present.

Valerie Teb­bets is the helpline coor­di­na­tor of the CT Coun­cil on Prob­lem Gam­bling and encoun­ters those with prob­lem gam­bling dai­ly. She has noticed that after the state legal­ized sports gam­bling the num­ber of peo­ple call­ing for help has sky­rock­et­ed.

“When the state passed the law to make sports gam­bling legal, the whole land­scape for our orga­ni­za­tion changed. Our phone lines were flood­ed with calls from peo­ple of all ages, but recent­ly the num­ber of calls (from those) between the ages of 20–30 has sky­rock­et­ed.”

The Coun­cil has tak­en this data and is using it to help mar­ket their ser­vices to peo­ple of younger ages specif­i­cal­ly col­lege-aged kids. “As a coun­cil, we know that we have to find new ways to reach col­lege-aged kids, there­fore we have made appear­ances at places such as XL Cen­ter, Rentschler Field, and Gam­pel Pavil­ion.”

Teb­bets acknowl­edges that the coun­cil must have more of a social media pres­ence to reach col­lege-aged demo­graph­ics.

A study from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Neva­da, Las Vegas shows that the num­ber of col­lege-aged stu­dents who suf­fer from gam­bling addic­tion has increased by 50 per­cent over the last decade. The study explains that the rea­son this is the case is due to fac­tors such as online gam­bling becom­ing more pop­u­lar, the legal­iza­tion of sports bet­ting, and peer pres­sure.

Teb­bets believes a lack of teach­ing sur­round­ing prob­lem gam­bling is anoth­er rea­son. “When it comes to alco­hol addic­tion and drug addic­tion kids are taught at a very young age cer­tain ways they can avoid them. Since sports gam­bling is new to younger gen­er­a­tions they do not get these lessons and it results in them being more sus­cep­ti­ble to devel­op­ing a prob­lem,” Teb­bets said.

Address­ing these issues with kids at a young age will help mit­i­gate this ongo­ing prob­lem.

Bob Matthews is a father of a col­lege stu­dent who gam­bles fre­quent­ly and knows the issues it caus­es for his son, Bran­don.

“It was between May and June when I looked at his account and I just saw ten deposits to Fan­Du­el alone,” Matthews said. “I end­ed up talk­ing to him about it and the prob­lem stopped for a while, but I can see it start­ing to pop up again.”

Matthews wished he had this talk with his son soon­er, “I wish I knew how dan­ger­ous gam­bling could become for him to warn him before a prob­lem appeared.”

Matthews’s son Bran­don has a dif­fer­ent rec­ol­lec­tion of his socalled prob­lem, “I admit I was gam­bling a lot dur­ing those months but at the same time I was win­ning some too, so it wasn’t all bad.” Bran­don went on to admit that he was los­ing more mon­ey than he was mak­ing, and it could have led to an even­tu­al prob­lem.

This con­nec­tion between a father and a son shows that while par­ents may be aware of how much their child is gam­bling, it still may not cause the child to stop.

Kait­lyn Kras­set is the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor for the Con­necti­cut Depart­ment of Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion and like Teb­bets has seen her depart­ment change since the new law went into place. “I’ve seen our role change in many ways since 2021, for exam­ple, we are more active with oth­er depart­ments around the state to help pre­vent prob­lem gam­bling,” she said.

She men­tions that her depart­ment works close­ly with the CT Coun­cil on Prob­lem Gam­bling and the Con­necti­cut Men­tal Health Cen­ter. She believes these rela­tion­ships can help the state tack­le the prob­lems of prob­lem gam­bling and addic­tion head-on. “If all depart­ments across the state work togeth­er for the same goal instead of oper­at­ing sep­a­rate­ly, then the odds of us reduc­ing addic­tion in the state great­ly increase,” she said.

For rou­tine gam­blers like Duck­stein, know­ing that there is help is espe­cial­ly impor­tant. “Many of the times that I lose, I usu­al­ly laugh it off and tell my friends that it is only mon­ey but deep down it does hurt,” he said. “So now that I know I am not alone in this issue I may search for help if I feel like I need to.”

Duck­stein also points to the stig­ma when it comes to admit­ting you may have a gam­bling addic­tion. “I feel that if some­one says they are going to quit or take a break, their friends’ kind of laugh at them caus­ing them to con­tin­ue gam­bling.”

He believes that break­ing this stig­ma will help reduce prob­lem gam­bling over­all.

Kel­ly Lep­pard is the Pri­ma­ry Pre­ven­tion Ser­vice Coor­di­na­tor for the Depart­ment of Health and Addic­tion Ser­vices. She sees first­hand how dan­ger­ous prob­lem gam­bling and gam­bling addic­tion are, “Sui­cide rates for those who suf­fer from gam­bling addic­tion is high­er than those who suf­fer from alco­hol and drug addic­tion.”

She believes this is the case because gam­bling involves spend­ing and in most cas­es los­ing mon­ey and it has more of a mon­e­tary impact on the indi­vid­ual. “At our depart­ment, we aren’t against gam­bling in any sort of way, we are just a resource to use if you feel that if you need help,” she said.

Lep­pard agrees with Duck­stein that there is a stig­ma when it comes to gam­bling addic­tion and men­tal health. “There def­i­nite­ly is sort of a stig­ma with both and until the stig­ma is shat­tered, long term progress may nev­er hap­pen.”

As the state nav­i­gates sports and online gam­bling it is impor­tant to under­stand prob­lem gam­bling and the ways it can be pre­vent­ed.

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