The television network that now carries most Milwaukee Bucks games, and will carry most Milwaukee Brewers games this year, is named for an online sportsbook: FanDuel. It’s a far cry from 80 years ago when NYC briefly outlawed pinball for being “gambling machines,” and just seven years ago when online gambling and the majority of sports betting was illegal throughout most of the U.S.
Sports gambling is very much here, and it’s spreading. Every commercial break seems loaded with sports betting ads. Everyone seems to have a hunch. Every smartphone is a casino.
Every day, addiction therapists see the worst of it.
“With the expansion of gambling, we’re going to see more people gamble, and we’re going to see more people who are having issues or problems or just concerns about gambling,” says Andrew Schreier, a Menomonee Falls-based counselor who has specialized in serving Wisconsinites with gambling addiction for the past decade.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
Three experts Milwaukee Magazine talked to – Rose Blozinski, executive director of the Wisconsin Council on Problem Gambling; Elliot Rapaport, founder of online-based gambling addiction counseling provider Birches Health, which provides services nationwide including in Wisconsin; and Schreier – all say that the demographics of problem gamblers have skewed younger while demand for interventions have grown across the board, following nationwide trends.
Around $1.5 billion will be legally gambled on the Super Bowl this year. And, as sportsbooks typically have an edge of between 4.5% and 7.7% on all action, U.S. gamblers will likely lose between $675 million and $1.155 billion just on Super Bowl LIX, just through legal gambling avenues. (Insiders estimate the off-the-books gambling market, which includes everything from office pools to Shohei Ohtani’s ex-translator, remains 15 times larger than the lawful side.)
The number of calls to the Wisconsin Council on Problem Gambling 24/7 crisis line (1-800-GAMBLE-5) has tripled in the past three decades: from fewer than 5,000 every year before 2000 to 14,870 in 2024. Demand peaked in 2021, when calls to the crisis line surpassed 22,000.
Definition: Gambling Disorder is identified by a pattern of repeated and ongoing betting and wagering that continues despite creating multiple problems in several areas of an individual’s life.
The primary cause of this surge appears to be deregulation, along with accessibility and advertising.
It started with the 2018 Supreme Court ruling that struck down a law that had prohibited most sports betting everywhere in the country except Nevada. With this deregulation, capitalism has done what it always does: more sportsbooks are opening and expanding, and advertising has ramped up to match.
The market size of online gambling was around $30 billion in 2017, grew to $86 billion in 2023, and may reach $133 billion by 2029, far outpacing the rates of inflation and population growth. About 55% of Americans gambled in some fashion at some point in 2024, a recent high water mark.
State of play
From 2003–2023, Wisconsin’s state gaming revenue has hovered around $1.3 billion. Tribal gaming payments – that is, effectively, the state tax on tribes’ earnings from gambling – surpassed $66 million for the first time in 2024.
This comes in spite of legal gambling remaining slightly more limited in Wisconsin than in other states. 31 states have legalized sports betting both in-person and virtually, allowing residents to place bets from the comfort of their couch. But Wisconsin (as well as neighbor Minnesota) has not. To legally bet on the Big Game here, you’re obligated to physically go to a sportsbook, such as the one that opened last spring at Potawatomi Casino Hotel.
Blozinski says it remains unclear if any legislative changes may be coming. It would also be a heavier lift to change the law here, as expanded gambling legalization would likely require an amendment to the state constitution. Doing so could also actually lead to a decrease in tax dollars. As the Wisconsin Policy Forum reported last month: “Notably, the tribal compacts (with the state regarding gambling) stipulate that if the state constitution is changed to allow non-tribal entities to conduct additional types of gambling, including sports betting, then the tribes would no longer be obliged to continue making these (tribal gaming) payments to the state.”
Easier to play, easier to lose
One of the problems presented by the ease of gambling today, specifically sports betting via smartphones, is how little time there is for an intervention – even a self-imposed intervention.
“There used to be a lot more space involved for interventions. There used to be a break between the moments of gambling,” especially if a would-be-gambler had to drive to the nearest casino, Schreier says. “Even going to an ATM (to get more cash to bet) was creating some distance.” With betting apps accessible on every smartphone, the space for intervention is no thicker than the thickness of your back pocket. This makes it possible for gamblers to get into the hole faster, and also more likely to fall back into bad habits when they’re trying to quit or moderate.
With the people he counsels, Schreier says that he prioritizes challenging false and dangerous thought processes. “People are thinking ‘Because it’s sports…they can make more educated bets,’ which is scary,” he says. “We’re seeing a lot more people who consider this (sports betting) skills-based, as opposed to slot machines,” even though the vast majority of bettors lose in the long-term.
According to the Milken Institute Review, sportsbooks’ so-called “win rate” is 7.7%. Meaning that for every $100 a gambler bets, the bettor loses (and the sportsbook wins) $7.70. For gamblers betting $5,000 per month (as 2% of them do), those big-time bettors are losing $4,620 annually — or the equivalent to around 3-4 months’ rent. And that’s assuming they don’t hit a string of bad luck. There remain few positive outliers. As researchers at the University of San Diego California found — in a paper titled “Legalized Gambling Increases Irresponsible Betting Behavior, Especially Among Lower-Income Populations” — only 4% out of 700,000 online gamblers came out winners. “That is by design,” one of the researchers stated. “Online gambling platforms often ban or throttle frequent winners’ accounts. There is no right to gamble.”
Even for problem gamblers who want to quit, the temptations are ever-present. For problem gamblers, having a smartphone in your pocket is now similar to a recovering alcoholic carrying around a handle of bourbon but being expected not to drink. Schreier says it’s not uncommon for him to be speaking with a new client who knows they want to quit gambling, but they still haven’t deleted sportsbook apps from their phone.
The inescapability of gambling advertising also plays a factor. DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM spent at least $75 million combined on TV ads during just the first three weeks of this NFL season, per iSpot. Concluded one 2019 study: “Exposure to advertising and inducements was reliably linked to a greater likelihood of betting, higher intended and actual betting expenditure, and spending more than intended.”
Blozinski agrees. “When it’s in our backyard, when it’s on our phone, on our computer and it’s very, very easy to access … there are certainly going to be higher numbers of people who are then going to get addicted to it. Unfortunately, it is a given.”
“Increased 24/7 access to online gambling has already resulted in increased treatment-seeking from individuals through trusted clinical providers and via hotlines – especially among at-risk populations,” Rapaport adds via email. “The ceaselessness of gambling ads can result in patients progressing to higher levels of acuity more quickly.”
In Pennsylvania, 21,000 people have added themselves to the state’s Self-Exclusion List, effectively banning themselves from entering casinos; it does not apply to online gambling. In 2024, about 6,000 people added their names to the list, nearly four times more than in 2020 when 1,600 people banned themselves from gambling in The Keystone State.
“Sports betting really took off in 2018.”
– Andrew Schreier, addiction counselor
Wisconsin does not have any kind of statewide Self-Exclusion List. Here, individual casinos manage their own privately, achieving a similar effect — albeit with more room for exploitation and a higher barrier if you want to be banned statewide.
Schreier emphasized that problem gamblers have the highest suicide rate when compared to those suffering from other addictions. But at the same time, “There are zero federal dollars towards education, prevention and treatment for problem gambling … Everything occurs at state level or (is led) by organizations like the Wisconsin Council on Problem Gambling.”
Schreier doesn’t oppose gambling in principle – “I still want them (my clients) to have autonomy” – but believes there need to be more safeguards, particularly to protect young people. He points to a model growing in parts of Europe where gambling advertising is tightly limited; in the United Kingdom, celebrities are generally not allowed to appear in gambling ads. Laws banning language like “no risk” and “risk-free” in advertising need to continue being enforced, he adds.
“Gambling is all over. It’s part of the culture,” he says.
Blozinski likewise doesn’t think deregulation is the primary cause of today’s problems. She doesn’t see her office getting any less busy. Human beings have been “letting it ride” since the ancient Egyptians.
“Even in Wisconsin, if we didn’t have any legal gambling, there would be people that were gambling … Back in the day, alcohol was illegal for a while but people were drinking,” Blozinski says. That said, “If we were to have the same conversation five years from now, we (at the Office Of Problem Gambling) are probably going to have more phone calls to our helpline. We’re going to have more contacts of all kinds because people are still learning that gambling can be addictive.”
