OK parents, we’ve taught our kids to master the cell phone and the internet, now let’s teach them to gamble!
Back in 2021, a story in Pediatric Research and Child Health told of a researcher watching a young girl playing a slot machine game on a tablet installed in an airport waiting area. J.L. Derevensky, who is an expert in the social cost of young gamblers, said the girl was earning points, not real money, and she was loving it.
“ ‘She’s winning and saying to her dad, ‘I can’t wait until I play it for real.’ She must have been no more than 6 years old.”
Lia Nower, a distinguished professor and director of Gambling Studies at Rutgers University wrote in Addictive Behaviors, Vol. 135 in 2022, “Seeing parents, siblings or other members of the household gamble also normalizes gambling for kids, making them more likely to engage in gambling and other risky behaviors, including alcohol and drug use.
“The earlier kids get exposed to gambling through online games and other avenues, studies suggest, the more severe their gambling problems are likely to be later on,” a 2012 article by A.S. Rahman for the Journal of Psychiatric Research said.
Fourteen years after that warning, we now learn from Nower’s research that the fastest-growing group of sports gamblers are between 21 and 24 years old, who were between 7 and 10 years old when the psychiatrists and sociologists fired early warning shots about video gaming.
“I’m from the government and I here to help you”
“Really”?”
“Yes, I’m pleased to tell you that you can now legally gamble almost anywhere, anytime.”
Americans legally wagered a record estimated $1.76 BILLION, that’s 1,760 million dollars on the 2026 Super Bowl. That’s up nearly 27% over the 2025 game. Las Vegas’ handle, however was up only 11 percent. There’s more and more competition for the local bookies every day. Thirty-eight states and Washington D.C. now have legalized sports betting. Missouri is in the process of launching, and Georgia, Alabama and Minnesota have recently considered legislation to join the list of legal states.
(Sarcasm Alert: Why would Minnesota need legalized sports gambling? Just get a daycare license and you’re a big winner.)
AI says Generally, sports books aim for a hold percentage, retaining between 5-10%. Meaning the majority of the $1.76 billion was returned to the winners. But to fund $1.76 billion in winnings and the bookies’ fees, a really big amount of money was lost by the losing bets.
Getting rich gambling is as rare as an albino zebra (that would be one in several million births, according to AI. Where else would you get this level of information, save in The Hogwash Report?)
Losing, however, is nearly as common as death and taxes.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported gambling as the No. 2 service-sector industry for GDP growth between 2019 and 2024. Only software publishers did more business. Gambling can be an addiction, software consumption is a forced addiction.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, nearly 40 percent of men and 20 percent of women gamble online daily.
Since 2020, U.S. sports bettors have wagered over $600 BILLION in legal, regulated markets. The annual handle skyrocketed from over $21 billion in 2020 to $165 BILLION 2025. (Add to the $600 BILLION, the handle of the unregulated, illegal bookies, who generally give better odds, and you get a staggering number.)
This year’s Super Bowl handle kicks off another expected year of growth.
My Kid Wouldn’t Do That…
An article by Gabrielle Gurley, in the February 2026 issue of The American Prospect magazine, says “Few parents consider that their children could be spending time and money on sports betting.”
Tony Cattani, a principal in Mount Laurel Township, NJ, who last year was named the 2025-26 National High School Principal of the Year, told Gurley he often hears teenagers talking about point spreads, individual players, over/unders, and prop bets in their informal classroom conversations and at lunch.
“Kids talk about how they are betting on this one player,” Cattani says. “He made this shot, but it was after the buzzer.” (Otherwise he would have won $50.) “You hear kids talking about this at 15 to 17 years old.”
Nearly two-thirds of adolescents, ages 12 to 18, said they had gambled or played gambling-like games in the previous year, according to a 2018 Canadian survey of more than 38,000. That number of young gamblers is not likely to have decreased in the last seven years.
Yeah, betting by kids under 18 is generally banned, but it’s nearly impossible to enforce. They have their own cell phones and credit cards.
Now, This Was Smart…
And who was the genius who thought betting on specific pitches in a major league baseball game was a great idea?
Court filings this month alleged that Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz conspired to rig pitch outcomes for sports betting in at least 48 games. Betters allegedly won over $400,000 using this information. Clase and Ortiz were allegedly paid bribes to throw pitches that would win the bets for the conspirators. They also may have used acquaintances to place straw bets for them.
Clase was a three-time All-Star. He may have started the scheme as early as May 2023.
The Chicago Black Sox scandal, the Pete Rose betting scandal, and the Houston Astro sign-stealing scandal have, over the years, given rise to cynicism about the game’s integrity.
But in November of 2018, just six months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting, the MLB jumped in bed with the gamblers, consummating a multi-year deal with MGM Resorts International.
To give gamblers multiple times to bet on each game, the bookies came up with prop bets, or proposition bets, individual bets on, for instance, which team will will the coin toss, will LaBron score more or less that 27.5 points, will the first pitch by certain pitcher in the sixth inning be a ball or a strike, above or below 90.5 mph, There are dozens of opportunities to bet on each game.
So Clase knew that betters were choosing whether his first pitch in a certain inning would be a ball or a strike. The guys bribed Clase to make that pitch a ball. Clase threw it in the dirt. In that hypothetical, but alleged, scenario big dollars flowed to the conspirators.
So now, the bookies can take bets on whether Clase will be in the Guardians’ bullpen, or in a prison’s bullpen.
Wait There’s More…
In January, federal indictments charged more than three dozen players on 17 NCAA Division I teams with point-shaving and fixing dozens of games in the last two seasons.
Five defendants were described as “fixers,” who recruited players with bribes of between $10,000 to $30,000 to intentionally underperform. The bettors placed and won millions of dollars in wagers on the fixed games.
They were “fixing” prop bets. Bets like, which team will win the first half of the game were easily fixed when two or three players on a team were paid to under-perform, missing a shot here and there if necessary, making a turnover here or there, if necessary to see that their team would lose the first half by the number of points needed to secure the bets. In some cases individual players were bribed to personally score no more points than the “fixers” wanted.
Read Their Lips…
AI says the NCAA “continues to position itself as anti-gambling regarding its own games while acknowledging the “reality” of the gambling landscape.” Apparently that’s an acknowledgment that the gamblers will probably find a way.
Late last year, however, the NCAA gave in to gamblers. Beginning in November, college athletes and athletic department staff can now within NCAA rules can bet on professional sports in states where sports betting is permitted.
(Sarcasm Alert: In its tough stand against gambling, the NCAA prohibits sports betting-related advertising and sponsorships at NCAA championships.” )
The House Always Wins
It’s rumored that a Native American chief once said, “White man stole our land. Give us gambling and we’ll get it back.” That’s how casinos were finally available in places other than Las Vegas.
Thanks for reading. Your comments will make this post much more interesting.
Or you could just buy me a cup of coffee here for $5. I’m betting you won’t. Till next time…
Good points. I know that I could easily enjoy gambling... that "try just one more time for..." so I do not. I moved from CA to SDakota (where there are casinos on every block!). Still, I do not. Good point about kids and this... they need to be outside more.