How Should Regulators Address Sports Betting Advertisements?

In a 2023 case study, digital marketing company Braze highlighted its work with DraftKings, an online sports gambling company. The study boasts that Braze’s tools increased the rate at which users opened push notifications by 199 percent. For Braze, this was proof of successful engagement. For regulators, however, it illustrates how data-driven personalization can keep consumers tethered to betting apps.

The public health impact of these strategies is already visible. In Massachusetts, calls to the state’s gambling helpline more than doubled from 1,378 in 2022 to 3,050 in 2023, with calls related specifically to sports betting increasing over one thousand percent. Ohio reported a 277 percent jump in gambling-related calls in January 2023 compared to the prior year.

Braze emphasizes in its case study that DraftKings can utilize detailed consumer data to increase the effectiveness of what it calls “human” marketing. The company personalizes messages by drawing on user data and adjusting content to reflect a bettor’s past activity. InTarget, another digital marketing platform, encourages sportsbooks to time their push notifications for maximum effect. These push notifications include pre-game updates, live coverage, and promotional offers to entice users to re-engage after they have logged off.

These digital strategies fit into a much larger advertising landscape. In the United States, sports betting and its advertising are regulated at the state level. Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting in Murphy v. NCAA, each state has created its own framework for licensing betting operators and policing their marketing. This development means that responsible gaming requirements—such as mandatory helpline messages and the ability of players to exclude themselves from the platform for a period of time—vary between states.

The Massachusetts Gaming Commission found that the state’s residents are exposed to gambling promotions across nearly every medium, including television, social media, and billboards. The Commission’s report suggests that gambling advertisements and inducements, such as bonuses, credits, and rewards, lead to greater gambling involvement, particularly among young audiences and vulnerable individuals.

Regulators have tried to set guardrails. Massachusetts, for example, prohibits operators from labeling a promotion as “free” if users must risk their own money, requires ads to carry a problem-gambling message and helpline, and bars targeting minors or self-excluded individuals. In 2023, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission fined Penn Sports Interactive $25,000 for its “Can’t Lose Parlay” promotion, finding the ad misleading because no wager is ever risk-free. New York imposes detailed requirements on disclosure language and formatting, while New Jersey mandates that the 1-800-GAMBLER helpline appear on every ad.

Despite these steps, barriers to further regulation remain. Advertising restrictions implicate the First Amendment, and broadcasters and social media platforms also profit significantly from sportsbook campaigns, creating resistance to reforms that could reduce revenue. The current regulatory landscape reflects a tension between commercial interest and consumer protection. Although certain states have shown they will fine operators for misleading ads, the pervasiveness of gambling marketing remains a concern for regulators and activists.

In this week’s Saturday Seminar, legal and technology scholars explore how regulators can confront the addictive qualities of gambling platforms and advertising.

• Gambling and investing are distinct because while gambling requires creating an artificial risk to bet on, investing involves compensation for taking on a pre-existing risk, argues Karl Lockhart of Depaul University College of Law in a forthcoming article. Lockhart contends  that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) rationale for its attempt to ban election and sports-related event contracts as gambling fails to distinguish popular investment products from gambling products. Rebutting the CFTC’s reasoning, Lockhart explains that, like election and sports betting, many investment products also lack hedging and pricing utility, have opaque information sources, and raise concerns about market manipulation and participant harm. Lockhart emphasizes that when regulators distinguish between gambling and investments, they must ask which markets are permissible.
• Policymakers should adopt the words “addictive” and “addiction” to frame their concerns about the harms of social media, argue Matthew Lawrence and Haomin Yan of Emory University School of Law in a paper . Lawrence and Yan explain that the question of whether social media is addictive shapes policy and legal debates over protections for children. Drawing from regulations of drugs and gambling, Lawrence and Yan contend that labeling social media as addictive could help destigmatize other forms of addiction, which would in turn increase access to treatment and support for policy reforms. Emphasizing that self-help can only go so far, Lawrence and Yan advocate basing protections for children on precedents in public health and health law.
• In a working paper, Kurt Rotthoff of the Stillman School of Business at Seton Hall University argues that legalizing sports wagering yields significant benefits when supported by robust regulation. Rotthoff explains that prohibition pushes betting into a dangerous black market, whereas legalization enables oversight that reduces enforcement costs and enhances public safety. Regulated wagering, Rotthoff contends, bolsters the integrity of sports by allowing officials to monitor betting activity and crack down on match-fixing through reporting requirements. On consumer protection, Rotthoff argues that a legal market allows better monitoring of gambling behavior and facilitates treatment for problem gamblers. Although Rotthoff acknowledges that betting generally makes individuals and families worse off financially, he concludes that legalization is a net positive for society.
• In an article in the University of Cincinnati Law Review, Sadie Sand of the University of Cincinnati College of Law calls for federal regulation to curb online sports gambling addiction. Sand explains that although tort theories of addiction liability could hold sportsbooks accountable, individual lawsuits are likely to provide fragmented and insufficient remedies. Sand emphasizes that addiction litigation often comes too late to prevent harm and fails to establish uniform protections. Instead, Sand urges Congress to adopt proactive national regulations, including stricter limits on sports-betting ads and mandatory industry funding for addiction treatment. Such federal standards, Sand contends, would ensure consistent consumer protections across states and prevent gambling companies from exploiting regulatory gaps.
• Increases in problem betting and gambling addiction necessitate broader restrictions on broadcasted gambling advertisements, argues Mark Conrad of Fordham University Gabelli School of Business in an article in Harvard Journal of Sports & Entertainment Law. Conrad acknowledges that a complete ban would violate First Amendment commercial speech protections, but proposes solutions that would alleviate constitutional concerns while protecting viewers. Conrad provides one approach that invokes the Federal Communications Commission’s guidelines on ‘indecent’ broadcasts to limit gambling ads to late at night when adolescent viewers are likely not watching television. Conrad concludes that given the strong governmental interest in preventing minors from betting, these proposed restrictions directly advance that interest and are not more restrictive than necessary to achieve that goal.
• Elvira Bolat of Bournemouth University and several coauthors conduct a scoping review of forty-one studies on how influencer-driven gambling content affects children and young people. Bolat and her coauthors explain that despite legal prohibitions against gambling advertisements targeting minors, young audiences are exposed to gambling promotions through influencers on social media platforms such as TikTok and Twitch. Influencers use humor, lifestyle integration, and interactive streaming to normalize gambling and reduce perceived risks, Bolat and her coauthors emphasize. The Bolat team argues these tactics exploit regulatory gaps and algorithms, making exposure difficult to police. To mitigate harm, Bolat and her coauthors propose stronger regulatory oversight, mandatory sponsorship disclosures, robust age verification, and educational campaigns led by governments and public health organizations.