Online searches for gambling addiction surge as legalized sports betting expands, study finds

Internet searches seeking help for gambling addiction have “increased substantially” as the number of states with legalized sports betting has expanded in recent years, prompting a need for more public health awareness, according to a study released Monday.

The findings “suggest that sportsbooks pose a substantial health concern,” researchers at the University of California, San Diego, and Bryn Mawr College wrote in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

“A paradigm shift in how regulatory frameworks and health organizations collaborate to address the complexities of gambling harms is needed,” the researchers wrote.

The study comes as legalized sports betting has exploded into a multibillion-dollar industry following a 2018 Supreme Court ruling that broke up Nevada’s monopoly on the practice and cleared the way for state-sponsored sports gambling.

Americans were set to wager an estimated $1.4 billion in this year’s Super Bowl, up from $1.25 billion in 2024, according to the American Gaming Association.

Currently, 38 states and Washington, D.C., allow for sports betting in some form, whether at a physical establishment or online. Some states are generating hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues each year.

While online searches for gambling addiction help had declined or stabilized in 2020 as the Covid pandemic halted sporting events, the searches increased year over year since 2021, when 32 states had sports betting, according to the study.

Researchers analyzed monthly Google searches surrounding gambling addiction, such as for “gambling addiction hotline” or “am I a gambling addict,” and found that there were cumulatively 23% more searches nationally than expected since the Supreme Court ruling.

In the 73 months following it, “there were approximately 6.5 to 7.3 million searches for gambling addiction help-seeking nationally, with 180,000 monthly searches at a peak during June 2023,” the study said.

Researchers also conducted independent evaluations in eight states — Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia — where there were “significantly more searches than expected.”

They concluded the higher search volumes in those states were “highly unlikely to be due to chance.”

“Each state’s cumulative increase in searches was higher than the aggregate national model and their peak month typically occurred during 2024, suggesting that searches are continuing to rise following the opening of sportsbooks,” according to the study.