It’s a question some legislators are asking themselves. I lost all my money sports betting,” he said, according to Goode. They were headed to the bank to find out. His parents had logged into his bank account and found it inexplicably empty. The most memorable hotline call was handled by a colleague, Goode said. It is the cohort that some studies identify as most susceptible to gambling addiction, especially on sports. Both came from young men, the dominant demographic of the fantasy sports games that preceded the legalization of sports betting.
Goode said she took two such calls on the same Monday last month. “The new thing is people saying, ‘I just lost everything yesterday, because it was Football Sunday,’” said Diana Goode, executive director of the hotline’s operator, the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling. Connecticut’s problem-gambling hotline is busiest on Mondays, the day after America’s holy day of televised NFL football, when ubiquitous ads from DraftKings and FanDuel offer “free play” and “risk-free” bets.Ĭompared to November 2020, hotline calls were up 87% in November 2021, the first full month after Connecticut flipped the switch on online gambling and made every smartphone a portal to two casinos and three sportsbooks for anyone 21 and older.
