“What’s the line?” SHU hosts discussion on sports gambling

Experts met at Sacred Heart University on March 23 to discuss the impact of widespread sports betting and legalized gambling on both those dealing with addiction and nationwide industries.

Hosted by the Sports Communication and Media program at Sacred Heart University alongside the Collegiate Recovery Program and the Jack Welch College of Business & Technology, the conversation at the Loris Forum on Sacred Heart’s campus featured a broad swath of contributors.

Jeremy Schaap, a journalist at ESPN who is best known for hosting the sports news programs E:60 and Outside the Lines also served as the host of the panel. The panelists were all alumni from Sacred Heart University, including Gus Pfisterer, who also works at ESPN as a content associate and worked on a recent Outside the Lines segment about sports betting.

“There is a lot of ground to cover,” Schapp said to Pfisterer while discussing his segment. “There are the problem issues, the relationship stories, and there is just the whole idea that what was once so taboo, unspeakable, is now being embraced by the mainstream including the sports leagues.”

Connecticut joined many other states in quickly adopting laws to legalize and regulate the emerging industry after a supreme court case ruled that a complete ban on most sports betting was unconstitutional. August 24, 2021 marked the start of legalized sports betting in the state of Connecticut. Extensive marketing campaigns by apps like DraftKings and FanDuel were widespread, almost inescapable both immediately before and after the law went into effect.

Roughly a year after the legalization Connecticut did not immediately see the feared spike in gambling addiction but neither had it seen the hoped for flow of capital.

But the panel surfaced key ways that the industry has rapidly continued to change since it was first implemented.

Liam Roecklein, the founder and CEO of Relentless Digital Media and the former SVP of content at PointsBet, an online bookmaker, said that much of the media failed to pick up on changing viewership habits.

“People were watching sports through a gambling lens and the news media was still not capturing that viewing behavior,” Roecklein said of why he shifted from a role at Cheddar News to PointsBet. And he believes that the reason people watch sports has continued to shift.

“We wanted to talk to that consumer through a gambling lens versus a sporting lens and I continue to see that shift in viewing behaviors in Gen Z. I grew up in the Bronx in the 90s, I watched Derek Jeter because I liked to watch his batting average go up,” said Roecklein. “They watch it because they have prop bets on that night.”

Ryan Hannable, the managing content director at BetMGM explained how he was drawn to his current role producing blog content for the online sportsbook mainly because it offered a stable career using what he learned at Sacred Heart. He also noted that there was an emerging rift between the way that sports are covered in traditional media and more gambling oriented outlets.

Senior Director of Programs and Services with the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling, Kaitlin Brown and Brian Dolan, the Director of the Collegiate Recovery Program at Sacred Heart University who is also personally in recovery from addiction to both drugs and alcohol and problem gambling presented perspectives on gambling’s legalization through an advocacy lens.

“I’m just super grateful that we’re even doing this right now,” Dolan said, thanking his wife and mother for joining him in the audience. “It’s truly beyond my wildest dreams. On this campus is where a lot of things went south.”

Pfisterer noted that while he was a student on campus sports gambling had been pervasive despite being illegal. He recalled students driving to other states to place bets or using offshore gambling services. Despite the competition from legal gambling, he said that these activities have not been supplanted.

“Offshore and illegal gambling is still extremely prevalent today and it’s only getting bigger as the regulators come in,” he said, wishing that the topic could have been covered in more depth in the Outside the Lines piece.

Schapp asked Roecklein how the industry approaches the issues of problem gamblers.

“If you would have asked me this six months ago I would have given you the standard PR answer which  is ‘we always take gambling responsibly, and you must gamble responsibly,’” Roecklein said, pausing to apologize to Hannable for departing from that stance before he said “What I see as an individual, and I was an executive that reported to the PointsBet CEO and was in the rooms, there’s a continued push towards higher and higher margin products and it’s seen across the industry.”

“Only a year ago most of the betting happened on the core markets, which is money line spread and over-unders,” Roecklein said, referring to simple bets on which team would win a game or whether the score will be above or below a certain number. “Now, most of the betting takes place in same-game parlays.”

Parlays, where bettors wager on specific events happening during a game and need to successfully predict them all in order to win, can have higher payouts but also longer odds. According to Roecklein the industry uses algorithmic tools to target ads for these bets, which are more akin to playing a state lottery in terms of both the chances and the payouts than earning a 2-1 payout betting on the winning team.

However, he noted that high state taxes, which illegal operators don’t pay, play a role in encouraging this industry behavior since profit margins are often thin.

Hannable replied that BetMGM devoted resources to preventing problem gambling from occurring, as it could present a threat to the business.

“The operators do realize it can’t get out of hand,” Hannable said, “because if every bettor you know is losing thousands there’s no business anymore. So, there is a sense of importance, and I speak for our CEO, he stresses it is important to the growth of the industry to pay attention to this stuff.”

Brown shared that as a therapist prior to her time with the commission she worked with clients who dealt with gambling issues as well as their impacted families. She said she appreciated the discussion of the harms but noted that the Commission had launched a campaign alongside industry partners called “Responsible Play the CT Way.”

“We realize that when we go into college campuses and into communities and we say ‘problem gambling this’ and ‘problem gambling that’ sometimes the message is not heard so we’ve used the language the industry uses around responsible gambling,” Brown said, adding that harm reduction is often more effective as opposed to attempting to achieve universal prevention.

Dolan noted that in both terms of impact and symptoms, gambling has notable similarities to certain drugs.

“Gambling addiction is very similar to what we know stimulants are like on the brain. Cocaine and methamphetamine work very similarly,” Dolan said, but noted deep differences in terms of treatment. “I think how we look at it from a recovery lens there’s not a lot of treatment out there, not a lot of young people and the aspect of community which is the biggest difference.”

Dolan recalled how gambling and sports became intertwined for him, and how sports had provided him with a connection with other people in a way that drug use typically does not.

“If you’re talking to someone who abused heroin, they don’t have these fond memories of heroin at eight years old, but when you’re treating a gambler, you’re working against sports. Sports represent external validation, community,” Dolan continued. When he treats student athletes, athletics often form a core part of their identity. He also struggled to define himself without the sports he used to play and enjoy.

The panelists went on to discuss how the US, despite legalizing sports betting well after many other countries including most of Europe, has not fully grappled with issues related to legalized sports gaming. They discussed measures, such as advertising restrictions similar to those on tobacco products, that could help prevent gambling provide a steady revenue source without attracting those it can pose a danger to.

The panel also discussed the role that gambling can play in impacting the outcomes of games, as players have become embroiled in scandals. Leagues across different sports continue to develop their own rules that balance their lucrative partnerships with online sports books and preventing players from being swayed away from fair play.

Republican State Senator Tony Hwang who attended the panel also weighed in from the audience. He said he has concerns about the way that Connecticut’s share of gambling related funds comes through a complex structure that splits funds with the tribes which run the Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods casinos, but that he also had a deeply personal problem with the impact of sports betting on sports culture.

“The impact on our youth, particularly on a college campus, is it has turned a passion into a parlor game. For me there is a sadness that it’s no longer about the game.”