sb-borg via iStockPhoto
Watching college basketball at night is a longstanding tradition in my house. My dad and I sit in recliners with our eyes glued to the screen while we eat, do work, play with the dog, or do any other nightly activity. On this particular night, we are on the edge of our seats, screaming at the TV… it’s really coming down to the wire. The point guard pulls up a couple feet behind the three point line and misses, but his teammate slams in the rebound at the buzzer! My dad lets out a groan of disbelief and holds his head in his hands while I burst into laughter.
A college basketball enthusiast may assume that we’re watching the final minutes of a close game between blue bloods like Kentucky, Duke, UNC, or Kansas. Under normal circumstances, we would never be that invested in anything else. This was not the case. Instead, we had just watched Southern Illinois beat Valparaiso by 9 points. The game wasn’t particularly close, and the basketball was relatively low quality as neither school had a very good team. The gym looked more like a high school gym than a college one. None of this matters though. What matters is that my dad had $2.00 on Southern Illinois to win by at least 9.5, and they won by 9.
After it was legalized in 2018, sports betting exploded on the national scene. Prior to this ruling, it had only been legal in Nevada, with the country’s biggest sportsbooks being headquartered in Vegas. A total of 38 states have legalized sports betting since then, with the most recent being North Carolina.
Last year, Americans wagered $119.84 billion on sports, which is up 27.5% from last year. In my experience, sportsbetting has a fairly large influence on Vanderbilt students. On my floor, 50% of the guys are avid sports bettors (9 out of 18).
The motivations behind my peers’ betting habits may signal cause for concern. All of the bettors on my floor said that they bet to make money rather than to be entertained, which is a malinformed idea. The truth is that the sportsbook takes 10% of the pot on any given bet. For example, in a game that would otherwise have even odds, the house will usually give each side -110 odds, which means that each side would have to bet $110 in order to win $100.
The other issue with gambling for a profit is that it causes people to “chase” their losses. In doing so, they let previous losses affect the amount and the odds at which they decide to wager. Letting outside factors affect your betting results in worse decisions being made and more money being lost.
To make matters worse, betting companies like DraftKings and Fliff offer “free” money that has to be bet in order to be taken out and deposited into an account. For example, DraftKings currently has a promo in which new users get $200 in bonus bets as long as they bet at least $5 of their own money. This results in users getting hooked on betting and eventually losing money to the house.
All of this is to say that kids at Vanderbilt and college kids in general are betting at high rates and with the wrong motives. This is particularly alarming because college kids typically do not have enough money to lose on gambling apps. They are forced to chase their losses to try to make back the lost money, and they start letting outside variables affect their decisions. The potent combination of a sports betting addiction and the pressure to win back lost money has college kids losing hundreds of dollars on DraftKings, Underdog, or Fliff. End Result: college kids lose money, huge sportsbooks get richer.
