‘A casino in your pocket’
If betting now seems to be everywhere, Gerda Reith said recently here in The Signal, that’s because it is. Over the last few years, 38 American states have legalized online betting, and sports wagers have hit record volumes. In the meantime, prediction markets—which let people bet on future events—have gone mainstream. Since the beginning of last September, the amount wagered on prediction markets has grown nine times over. In the last week of January alone, people wagered US$4.3 billion.
But as betting has become ever more visible, Americans have begun shifting their views on it. A growing share sees legal sports betting as bad for both society and sports, according to a Pew Research Center survey. In July 2022, 34 percent said it was bad for American society; by July 2025, that number had climbed to 43 percent. The percentage who thought it bad for sports rose from 33 to 40 percent over the same period.
Politicians, too, have begun to notice. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed a sweeping legalization of online sports betting into law in 2021, but now says he “absolutely” regrets it. He’s doubled Ohio’s tax on sports betting and called on the major American sports leagues to ban player-specific, in-game bets on the grounds that they’re too easily fixed. “They’re just playing with fire,” he told the Associated Press. “I mean, they are just asking for more and more trouble, their failure to address this.”
What’s this surge of betting doing to American society?
Reith is a professor of sociological and cultural studies at the University of Glasgow. The gambling industry has seen spectacular growth since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized online betting in 2018, Reith told The Signal. And where there’s more betting, there are more problems with betting—problems that ripple through American life: Gambling leads to physical and mental health problems; in some cases, it may lead to suicide. There’s already evidence that credit scores have fallen in states that have legalized online gambling.
But to understand why the industry has surged, it’s not enough to look at the commissions these companies take from a growing number of gamblers. They’re no longer just offering bets—they’ve integrated themselves into what Reith calls an “ecosystem of gambling.” As this ecosystem has spread online and into smartphones, these companies have struck up partnerships with firms in every sector, from tech to finance …
Gustav Jönsson: How has compulsive betting in America changed since this wave of legalization?
