Millions of people tuned in to watch the highlight of the college basketball season: March Madness. Between every blockbuster play and timeout, the broadcast cuts to a flood of sports gambling promotions.
This March Madness, the American Gaming Association projected that Americans will bet $3.3 billion on NCAA men’s and women’s basketball teams. Tournaments like these have contributed to online sports betting exploding in popularity among youth. A survey issued by ESPN last month found that one in three young adults places an illegal sports bet before turning 21.
Teens at Palo Alto High School do not defy this statistic. Sports betting is a form of gambling that involves wagering on the outcome and elements of an athletic competition. Behind closed doors and laptops tilted at 45 degrees when a teacher walks by, the sports betting culture at Paly has flourished.
Ken, whose name has been changed by Verde, is a sophomore at Paly. Ken started placing $25 sports bets from time to time after seeing ads on YouTube from sports content creators. For Ken, it is not for financial gain, but rather to make watching sports more entertaining.
“Your favorite team wins, but nothing happens,” Ken said. “Life goes on. But then you put some more money in it and it’s a lot more fun. Every single point is entertaining, and you’re always on your feet. And I feel like that experience just brings so much more to watching sports.”
According to Keith Humphreys, a professor of behavioral sciences at Stanford University who studies addiction, by engaging in the practice of sports betting at a young age, teenagers are more likely to continue gambling long-term. Young adults’ brains are still developing and are primed to absorb habits for a lifetime.
“If you look at people who have addictions … the time when it starts is almost always adolescent or early adulthood,” Humphreys said. “You almost never run into a compulsive gambler who started at 40, or a smoker who started when they were 35.”
Humphreys explains that, to the brain, gambling is the equivalent of taking hard drugs. When people win their bets, there’s a spike in dopamine and increased happiness. This causes your brain to anticipate this reward.
Sports betting platforms are designed to take advantage of this cycle. By offering enticing, limited-time promotional offers to hook new users and pull back those who have already stopped gambling. These promotions can include “risk-free bets,” bonus bets or free wagers for first-time customers, making it easier for users to start placing bets or continue betting regularly.
In Ken’s first attempt at sports gambling, he quickly encountered issues creating an account. Under bill AB 831, online sportsbooks are illegal in California and sports betting is banned regardless of age. However, a Politico poll issued by the Citrin Center-Possibility Lab found over 60% of registered voters in California still participate in illegal online sports betting. This is because users, like Ken, can easily place bets on sportsbooks operating outside of California by faking their location.
Age was another issue for Ken. In the entire United States, no one under the age of 18 is allowed to gamble. To bypass this issue, he bets under his mom’s name. She allows it on the condition that she maintains full control over his spending and can revoke this privilege at any time.
According to Humphreys, gambling can also take up mental real estate in the brain where users are constantly focused on placing their next bet instead of family, grades or work.
John, a Paly junior still under the age of 18, was first exposed to gambling at 12 years old by his family. In the past, John felt no desire to watch sports, but participating in sports betting has required him to dedicate more time to watching games.
“I did kind of get more interested in sports … it gave me more of an interest in it because I was looking at the betting lines and looking at all these different statistics,” John said.
A typical bet for John ranges from $100 to $200, and he places them on a biweekly basis.
“One time, [I watched] like Russian ping pong, or something, dumb stuff like that,” John said. “[It] looked like good odds, sometimes I’ll just do fun bets.”
Numerous sports betting platforms allow users to win up to $1,000 without providing an ID. To avoid legal ramifications, John withdraws his sports gambling earnings as cryptocurrency and switches accounts after reaching the $1,000 limit.
“I keep doing crypto to keep it anonymous,” John said. “Holding it in crypto makes it a lot easier, especially given that your information, your identity, gets tied into it when you put it into your bank account.”
Legal punishments are avoidable, but long-term mental health consequences are still on the table. Despite acknowledging the possible harmful effects, John continues to gamble.
“Gambling is never good,” John said. “I do it for fun. I think I can control myself. I understand that it’s a stupidly addictive thing, so I tell people, ‘don’t do it.’”
When watching sports and placing bets become intertwined, Humphreys warns that the brain will create a secondary association between the two. For youth trying to quit sports gambling, watching or playing the sport in any form could trigger a relapse.
Avoiding a sports gambling addiction may be possible if done right. Greg Matson, the owner of sports betting company California Wager, strikes a balance between profit and play. Matson has over 1,500 paid subscribers and makes his living providing sports picks to the public for a fee. Matson compares sports betting to the stock market, where sports picks are the equivalent of well-researched investments.
“We won every single year, and we’ve done it across an array of sports,” Matson said. “If you have the information and you’re stubborn and disciplined above all else, that’s how you can do it.”
Matson runs his business by researching picks before sharing them with his customers, through which he’s made over $1 million in earnings. Sports fans are conflicted on whether to support sports betting, as the activity has been linked with numerous athletes purposely losing games to make money for themselves and others.
One recent example involves former professional basketball player Terry Rozier, who admitted in an interview with The Atlantic of intentionally leaving a game early so bettors could profit from wagers based on his underperformance.
“I think anyone who can influence a game should not be able to bet because it’s unfair and betting should be based on the game,” Ken said.
Sport betting has also invited a new culture into the world of athletes, a culture built on profit versus sportsmanship. Paly journalism teacher and sportsblog writer Brian Wilson has seen it first-hand online.
“People get … not just angry about it, but they get very into their conspiracy theory mode, which I think can get pretty toxic in terms of ‘is sports fixed?’” Wilson said.
When players prioritize bets over the integrity of the game, the enjoyment of sports decreases for everyone.
“I always have questions when I see an athlete who’s sponsored and promoted by sports, because then you wonder who else is paying them more, or what else might be happening, it just raises a lot of red flags,” Matson said.
Despite his success in this industry, Matson hopes to see stronger security measures implemented in the future to keep teens off sports betting platforms. The burden is on California legislators, but just as much on parents.
“Ignorance is a lot of it, too, and you can’t just expect that if you [parents] don’t talk about it, if you’re not aware of it, and you don’t make your kids aware of it, it’s just not going to happen,” Matson said.
According to Matson, what drives gamblers into debt is unrealistic expectations and unnecessary risk-taking. For Matson, most of his winnings come from simple, single-bet, safe plays.
“You have to lose a lot. You have to learn the hard way, and that can become costly,” Matson said. “As someone who does it for a living, I would never advise somebody to get into this. It’s a tough world, and it’s unforgiving.”