It’s a cool October evening. A gentle breeze flows through your open window as a burnt orange leaf falls gracefully from the sky. Like millions
of other Americans, you’re planning on spending this pleasant Sunday sunken into your couch watching the high flying action of the National Football League. But while you’re watching the game, you can’t help but notice the new betting “deal” that sportsbooks are bragging about every commercial break. How could you not be enticed? It’s $200 in free bets from DraftKings and FanDuel, and a fully ensured first bet from UnderDog and Caesar sportsbooks. Who in their right mind would pass up on this free money? And besides, you’re a sports fan, of course your bets will hit. You know enough about football to cheat the system, and make an absurd amount of money.
Over the next few months, however, these too-good-to- be-true deals reveal themselves to be just that. You’ve dug yourself into a hole and have lost hundreds of dollars. But don’t worry, it’s okay – once tonight’s parlay hits, you’ll only be down 90-bucks. From there, you are only two more bets away from breaking even, and if you’re really in a hurry, you can just double down on that next bet and you can make your money back twice as fast… right?
If this sounds familiar, you would be far from the first person to fall into this trap, and you surely won’t be the last. Sports gambling is a vice as old as man, dating back more than 6,000 years by some historians’ estimates. But since the Supreme Court rescinded the Amateur Sports Protection Act -which made it unlawful for states to allow betting on sports- in May of 2018, 38 states and two American territories have legalized sports gambling. And in recent years, this issue has snowballed through the halls of Noblesville High School.
“It’s something I talk about with all my [friends,]” one senior said. “It’s a high school guy’s thing to want to talk about over/ unders and parlays.” [The Mill Stream policy is to not identify students who may be involved with an addiction problem.]
This student is not yet 18 and thus doesn’t legally gamble himself. However this does not stop him from planning for when the day when he can.
“I would gamble if I was 18, but right now I don’t want to mess with it. Yeah, I can’t wait to be 18 [to gamble]” the student said.
It may seem easy to judge this student because he’s preparing to gamble at the first legal opportunity. But even when understanding the risks, sports gambling is something that is increasingly hard to avoid in the world of sports media. Since its legalization in 2018, advertisements for sports betting have become unavoidable while watching any sports programming.
“My stepdad got into sports gambling during the Super Bowl one year. If you made an account, there was a ‘Bet $5 – Win $200’ deal to get people to sign up. He now gambles, and it was pretty bad for a while. He would hit one every once in a while but now he is down all the time. When we would talk to him about it, he would talk about how his bets would definitely hit. We had to tell him to just stop,” the senior said. “It’s not like I don’t understand it. It’s just hard to avoid when everytime you open Instagram you’re seeing posts from ESPN Bets.”
Stories like this are quite common in the halls of the NHS. Another senior remembers his entrance into the world on gambling.
“When I turned eighteen I got PrizePicks. I love football and basketball and figured ‘Why not?’ Plus they had some deal that gave me free money,” this senior said.
After losing that initial “free money” this senior continued betting, losing hundreds of dollars. When asked how much total H money he has lost, he responded that he only lost “a hundred bucks” and that it “wasn’t bad.” But according to some of his worried peers, the senior’s true deficit is much closer to a thousand dollars.
Addiction researchers have repeatedly found a correlation between addicts and a pattern of lying about the extent of their vices. It is commonly seen in addicts of a younger age, and Michael Rothrock, an AP Psychology teacher at Noblesville High School, has noted many such patterns in the students he sees.
“I think that teens are much more susceptible to dopamine addictions. I’ll use my own sons and daughters as an example\ [of dopamine addiction] with their screen time,” Rothrock said. Rothrock also has noticed issues stemming from gambling that often have strong and damaging effects.
“It’s the need for instant gratification. [Gambling] is a very difficult way to run your life. There are guys that can do it. They a play poker and make millions of dollars, but the percentage of the population that can pull that off is minuscule,” Rothrock said.
This idea of being one of these lucky few people who are able to find success in the world of gambling is something that is mentioned by multiple students.
“My friend won $5,000 on the Super Bowl, or something crazy like that,” the first senior said. “I wanna be one of the people you see on Instagram or Twitter with the +20,000 parlay that hits,” the second senior said. A sophomore, one who has by his own estimation has lost more than $2,000 of his and his parents’ money across three different gambling sites, still remains convinced that his big break is coming.
“My friend’s cousin’s friend hit this, like, +200,000 parlay during March Madness two years ago. It was crazy. Once I hit something like that, I’m gonna invest it all and retire at, like, 30,” the sophomore said.
The sophomore is 16 years old and has been gambling since right after his 15th birthday. He remembers how his first experience with gambling was a family event.
“I started with helping my dad make a parlay, and then it hit and we made like $200. After that, I convinced my parents to let me make an account under their name so I could do it at 15,” the sophomore said.
This student’s actions are, in fact, breaking the law. According to Indiana Code § 4-38, the Sports Wagering Act, all persons who wish to place
a sports major bet may do so at any registered sports book as soon as they turn 21. Yet somehow, many 18 year old students have no problem being able to place valid wagers right from their phone.
“I signed up right when I turned 18. It wasn’t hard, I just had to scan my ID to prove I was 18,” the second senior said.
However, due to a loophole in the statute, many gambling sites are able to allow business from 18 year olds. The law only enforces the age limit of 21 in a situation in which the customer is wagering at a business registered by the state of Indiana as a sportsbook. These sites exploit this loophole where users are not technically directly wagering their money. Instead, gamblers buy a virtual currency which they can wager and then sell back to the site, similar to chips at a casino. This also allows for these pseudo-sportsbooks to be exempt from the regulations that registered sportsbooks are held to. Issues are made worse by the legal consequences that are rarely handed out.
“The burden is on the gambler, not the website,” Noblesville Resource Officer Andrew Reiss said. “Unlawful gambling laws say that a person who knowingly or intentionally engages or commits unlawful gambling commits a Level Six felony.”
Reiss says the effects of this specific law, and how it hinders large scale action from being taken by the state, allows many violators of the statute to get away with their illegal actions.
“It really isn’t enforced by law enforcement. We legalized some gambling inside casinos, and then we allowed it in websites, and it’s some- times hard to navigate what’s legal and what’s illegal from a law enforcement standpoint. I know that throwing five bucks in a bracket pool is illegal, technically,” Reiss said. “It’s just like when I’m out on the street. Someone could be going 32 in a 30 [MPH zone], and that can be some- thing I choose not to deal with. Some of the lack of enforcement comes from not wanting to invest our law enforcement time.”
The Mill Stream reached out to the authors of the Indiana gambling statutes, as well as state and local representatives, to ask if they were aware of this issue and if any action was planned to stop this from continuing in the future. The Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office was also contacted about whether their office was working to address the problem. None of the government officials contacted chose to respond to this article. However, it seems as though many of those who are actually affected by the issue are not currently opposed to the current legislation. Nor do they want or expect changes to come.
“I don’t care what the rules are as long as I can make money,” the sophomore said. “My only concern would be when I win a bunch, not letting them know I’m 16. That’s literally the only issue I’m gonna have. Too much money.”
