You told yourself it was entertainment. A way to make watching the game more interesting. Maybe you won a little at first, felt that rush, placed another bet during the next commercial break. The app made it so easy—a few taps on your phone, right there on the couch. You could bet on anything: the next play, the next pitch, whether the next possession would end in a field goal. By the third month, you were betting during your lunch break. By the sixth month, you were taking out a second credit card. By the end of the first year, you had lost your savings, lied to your spouse about where the money went, and found yourself placing bets you knew you could not afford just to chase the feeling you got those first few times.
When you finally spoke to a therapist about it, they used a term you had only heard in movies: gambling disorder. They explained it like an addiction, something that happens in your brain, something clinical and real. You felt relief that it had a name, that it was not just weakness or poor character. But you also felt confusion, because you had never been the type to lose control. You did not grow up going to casinos. You were not someone who bought lottery tickets or played poker with friends. This was different. This was an app on your phone, surrounded by advertisements during football games, endorsed by celebrities, presented as a normal part of being a sports fan.
What your therapist may not have told you—because they may not know—is that the companies behind these apps studied this exact pattern. They knew how the design of their platforms could create compulsive behavior. They tracked which features made people bet more often, lose track of time, return to the app after losing. And they built their business models around those features.
What Happened
Gambling disorder is a recognized mental health condition in which a person cannot control the urge to gamble despite negative consequences. It progresses like other addictions, with increasing tolerance—needing to bet more money or more often to get the same feeling—and withdrawal symptoms when trying to stop. People with gambling disorder continue to bet even when they know they are destroying their finances, their relationships, and their mental health.
What makes app-based sports betting different from traditional gambling is the speed and access. In a casino, there is travel time, social visibility, and natural breaks between bets. With mobile sports betting apps, you can place hundreds of bets in a single evening without leaving your home. The apps offer in-game betting, meaning you can wager on every possession, every pitch, every serve, creating a continuous loop of action and reaction. Push notifications remind you to bet when you have not opened the app. Algorithms track your behavior and offer you promotions timed to moments when you are most likely to continue betting.
The financial devastation is swift. People describe losing tens of thousands of dollars within months. Maxing out credit cards, draining retirement accounts, borrowing from family under false pretenses. The apps make it seamless to deposit more money, often with one-click payments linked directly to bank accounts. The psychological impact compounds: shame, anxiety, depression, and in severe cases, suicidal ideation. Relationships collapse under the weight of lies and financial ruin. People lose their marriages, their homes, and their sense of who they are.
The Connection
App-based sports betting is engineered to create the conditions for addiction. The mechanism is rooted in behavioral psychology, specifically variable ratio reinforcement schedules—the most powerful method for establishing compulsive behavior. This is the same principle that makes slot machines addictive: unpredictable rewards delivered at unpredictable intervals create a persistent urge to keep trying.
A 2022 study published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions found that the structural characteristics of online sports betting—continuous access, rapid bet placement, and in-play betting—significantly increased the risk of developing gambling disorder compared to traditional sports betting. The researchers noted that in-play betting, which allows wagers on events happening in real time during a game, creates a state of continuous arousal and near-miss experiences that are strongly associated with addiction.
The apps use data analytics to personalize the experience in ways that maximize engagement, which in the gambling industry is a euphemism for maximizing the amount of money and time a user spends on the platform. DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM all employ algorithms that track user behavior: how often you bet, when you bet, how much you lose before you stop, and what types of promotions bring you back after a losing streak. This data is used to optimize the user interface and the timing of push notifications.
A 2021 report from the UK Gambling Commission, which has studied app-based gambling more extensively than U.S. regulators, found that gambling companies use several design features known to increase addictive behavior: losses disguised as wins (celebrating a payout that is less than the original wager), near-miss messaging (telling users they were close to winning), and continuous play design (making it difficult to stop between bets). All three major U.S. sports betting apps incorporate these features.
The neurological impact is measurable. Functional MRI studies have shown that people with gambling disorder show decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain responsible for impulse control and decision-making—and increased activity in the reward centers of the brain when anticipating a bet. A 2020 study in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews confirmed that the brains of people with gambling disorder respond to gambling cues in the same way that people with substance use disorders respond to drugs: with intense craving and diminished control.
What They Knew And When They Knew It
The companies behind these apps did not stumble into addictive design. They studied it, tested it, and built their platforms around it.
Internal documents from DraftKings, revealed in a 2023 Massachusetts Attorney General investigation, showed that the company tracked users it internally referred to as high-frequency players. These were users who logged in multiple times per day, had high loss rates, and showed patterns consistent with problem gambling. Rather than implementing interventions, DraftKings used this data to target these users with personalized promotions. One internal email from 2021 discussed how users who had just experienced significant losses were more likely to respond to bonus offers, and recommended timing promotions accordingly.
FanDuel conducted its own research into user behavior. Documents submitted to New York regulators in 2022 during the state licensing process included a 2020 internal study that analyzed session length and betting frequency. The study found that users who engaged with in-game betting had session lengths three times longer than users who only placed pre-game bets, and were significantly more likely to deposit additional funds during a session. FanDuel used these findings to prioritize in-game betting features in its app design and marketing strategy.
BetMGM, a joint venture between MGM Resorts and Entain, had access to decades of casino gambling research. Entain, formerly known as GVC Holdings, had been fined multiple times in the UK for failing to prevent problem gambling. In 2019, the UK Gambling Commission fined Entain 5.9 million pounds after finding the company had failed to intervene with customers showing clear signs of problem gambling, including one customer who deposited over 1 million pounds in a single year while unemployed. When BetMGM launched in the United States in 2018, it applied the same high-engagement design principles that had proven profitable in the UK market.
All three companies were aware of the public health research. A 2018 study published in the Journal of Gambling Studies, funded in part by industry sources, found that the introduction of legal sports betting apps in European markets led to measurable increases in gambling disorder diagnoses, particularly among young men. The study noted that the convenience and privacy of mobile betting removed traditional barriers that had previously limited gambling behavior. The American Gaming Association, of which DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM are all members, received a presentation on this study in 2019.
By 2020, internal discussions at all three companies acknowledged the addiction risk. A DraftKings product development meeting summary from March 2020, disclosed during litigation in Illinois, included a discussion of responsible gaming features. One executive noted that implementing cooling-off periods or mandatory session breaks would likely decrease revenue from the highest-frequency users. The decision was made to implement only minimal responsible gaming features, such as allowing users to self-exclude, while continuing to develop features that increased engagement.
How They Kept It Hidden
The sports betting industry employed several strategies to minimize public awareness of addiction risks and to shape the regulatory environment in their favor.
First, they funded research that focused on the benefits of legalization—increased tax revenue, job creation, and the elimination of illegal gambling markets—while avoiding or minimizing discussion of public health harms. The American Gaming Association created a research council in 2018 that distributed grants to academic researchers studying gambling. A 2023 investigation by the Journal of Public Health Policy found that studies funded by industry sources were significantly less likely to report negative health outcomes than independently funded studies.
Second, the companies used celebrity endorsements and sports league partnerships to normalize app-based betting. DraftKings became an official partner of the NFL in 2019. FanDuel partnered with the NBA in 2018. These partnerships gave the apps an aura of legitimacy and embedded them into the sports viewing experience. The marketing campaigns featured athletes and celebrities using the apps casually, framing betting as a routine part of being a sports fan rather than a form of gambling with inherent risks.
Third, the industry lobbied aggressively at the state level to avoid strict regulation. Between 2018 and 2023, DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM spent over 80 million dollars on lobbying efforts across states considering sports betting legislation. Their primary goal was to minimize responsible gaming requirements, avoid mandatory cooling-off periods, prevent limits on in-game betting, and block provisions that would require apps to identify and intervene with problem gamblers. In most states, they succeeded.
Fourth, the companies used terms of service agreements and arbitration clauses to prevent public litigation. Users who signed up for the apps agreed to resolve disputes through private arbitration rather than public courts, which keeps cases and outcomes confidential. This prevents the accumulation of public case law and makes it difficult for potential plaintiffs to understand the scope of harm or the strength of their claims.
Fifth, when individual cases did emerge, the companies settled quickly with non-disclosure agreements attached. A 2022 case in New Jersey involved a plaintiff who lost over 200,000 dollars in six months and alleged that DraftKings failed to intervene despite clear signs of problem gambling. The case was settled within four months, and the terms remain confidential. This pattern has repeated across multiple cases, preventing the public disclosure of internal documents and company practices.
Why Your Doctor Did Not Tell You
Most physicians, therapists, and counselors were not trained to recognize or ask about app-based sports betting. Gambling disorder has traditionally been underdiagnosed, and medical training programs have only recently begun to include it in addiction medicine curricula.
When sports betting apps launched at scale in 2018 and 2019, the public health community was not prepared. The apps were marketed as entertainment, not gambling. They were advertised during family programming, integrated into sports broadcasts, and endorsed by mainstream athletes. This cultural framing made it difficult for healthcare providers to recognize the risk. A patient presenting with anxiety, depression, or financial stress might never be asked about gambling, because the provider did not think to ask.
The companies also did not provide clear risk information to the medical community. Unlike pharmaceutical companies, which are required to distribute prescribing information to physicians, gambling companies have no such obligation. There were no Dear Doctor letters, no continuing medical education programs about the risks of app-based betting, no outreach to primary care physicians or mental health providers.
Furthermore, the research on app-based sports betting was still emerging. The first wave of studies documenting the increased addiction risk associated with mobile betting began to appear in 2019 and 2020, but it takes years for new research to be incorporated into clinical practice guidelines. Most providers were still thinking about gambling disorder in terms of casinos and slot machines, not apps on a phone.
The normalization of sports betting also created a cultural barrier. When something is advertised constantly, endorsed by celebrities, and integrated into mainstream entertainment, it does not register as a serious health risk. Providers might ask about alcohol, tobacco, or drug use, but betting on a football game seemed benign by comparison. This is precisely what the companies intended.
Who Is Affected
If you used DraftKings, FanDuel, or BetMGM and developed gambling disorder, lost significant money, or experienced harm to your relationships or mental health, you are not alone, and what happened to you follows a pattern.
The people most affected tend to be those who engaged with in-game or live betting, which allows continuous wagering throughout a game. If you found yourself betting on multiple events within a single game—the next play, the next score, individual player performances—you were using the feature most strongly associated with addiction.
You may have noticed that you started betting more frequently over time. What began as a weekend activity became something you did during the workday, late at night, or first thing in the morning. You may have found yourself thinking about betting even when you were not actively using the app, planning your next bets, or replaying losses in your mind.
Financial patterns are also telling. If you deposited money multiple times in a single day, especially after losses, that is a sign of chasing behavior—trying to win back what you lost, which is one of the hallmark symptoms of gambling disorder. If you borrowed money, used credit cards, or dipped into savings that were meant for other purposes, the disorder had progressed beyond recreational use.
Many people describe a turning point where they realized they could not stop. You may have tried to take a break, deleted the app, or promised yourself you would not bet again, only to reinstall the app hours or days later. You may have lied to family members about how much you were betting or where money was going. You may have felt shame, guilt, or panic about your financial situation but continued to bet anyway.
The demographic most affected, according to multiple studies, are men between the ages of 21 and 45, but women and older adults have also developed gambling disorder from these apps. The key factor is not demographics but exposure and design. If you used the app regularly and engaged with the features designed to maximize engagement—push notifications, personalized promotions, in-game betting—you were exposed to the highest risk.
Where Things Stand
Legal action against DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM is in the early stages but gaining momentum. As of 2024, over 40 individual lawsuits have been filed across multiple states, alleging that the companies failed to implement adequate responsible gaming measures, targeted users showing signs of problem gambling, and designed their platforms to create addictive behavior.
In Massachusetts, the Attorney General opened an investigation in 2023 into whether DraftKings violated state consumer protection laws by failing to intervene with users who exhibited clear signs of gambling disorder. That investigation is ongoing, and DraftKings has been required to produce internal documents related to user tracking and responsible gaming practices.
In Illinois, a class action lawsuit filed in 2023 alleges that FanDuel and DraftKings violated the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act by using deceptive marketing practices that downplayed addiction risks and by designing their apps to exploit psychological vulnerabilities. The case survived a motion to dismiss in early 2024, allowing discovery to proceed.
In New York, a lawsuit filed in 2024 specifically targets the use of algorithms to identify and target problem gamblers with personalized promotions. The plaintiff, who lost over 300,000 dollars in 18 months, alleges that BetMGM continued to send him promotional offers even after he had set deposit limits on his account, which he argues demonstrated the company knew he was trying to control his gambling but chose to encourage continued play.
Several state legislatures are also considering new regulations. In 2023, Ohio introduced a bill that would require sports betting apps to implement mandatory cooling-off periods and to flag accounts that show signs of problem gambling for human review. Similar legislation is being considered in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Colorado. The industry is lobbying aggressively against these measures.
There has not yet been a major settlement or verdict, but the legal landscape is similar to the early stages of opioid litigation, when individual cases began to reveal patterns of corporate knowledge and deliberate design choices that prioritized profit over safety. As more internal documents are disclosed through discovery, the scope of what these companies knew and when they knew it will become clearer.
Attorneys handling these cases are looking for plaintiffs who can demonstrate a clear timeline: when they started using the app, how their usage escalated, the financial losses they incurred, and the impact on their mental health and relationships. Medical records showing a diagnosis of gambling disorder, therapy records, and financial records documenting losses all strengthen a case.
The Algorithm Knew Before You Did
What happened to you was not a moral failure. It was not a lack of willpower or a character flaw. It was the result of a business model built on behavioral psychology, tested and refined to maximize the amount of time and money you would spend. The companies behind these apps studied how to keep you engaged, tracked the patterns that indicated you were losing control, and used that information not to help you but to extract more from you.
The algorithm knew you were in trouble before you did. It tracked your session lengths, your deposit frequency, your losses. It knew when you were chasing and when you were vulnerable. And it sent you a notification at exactly the right time to bring you back. That was not chance. That was design. And the people who built that design knew what they were doing, because the research has been clear for years: these features create addiction, and addiction creates profit. You were not the one who failed. You were the one they targeted.