25 Investigates: Sports betting could raise odds of problem gambling in MA

For gaming lobbyists Bill Pascrell and Martin Lycka, the legalization of online sports betting in Massachusetts – and the deluge of ads featuring Boston sports legends – heralds a fatal blow to illegal betting sites and provides a data-driven way to target hard-to-reach problem gamblers.

“Those legislators coming up with these crazy ideas to ban advertising, all that’s going to do is push people to the black market,” Pascrell, a partner at the nation’s largest statewide lobbying firm Princeton Public Affairs Group, told 25 Investigates in a wide-ranging interview with anchor and investigative reporter, Kerry Kavanaugh.

But for several public health experts and researchers, the head of the Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health, a lawmaker and two problem gamblers, the legalization of online sports betting on March 10 means that it’s now easier and faster than ever for sports betting companies to target young adults and other vulnerable groups who may have never tried it otherwise.

“Young people are certainly of great, grave concern for us,” Marlene Warner, Chief Executive Officer of the nonprofit Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health, told 25 Investigates.

“The speed of being able to bet on these online apps is as much a concern, in my opinion, as the greater accessibility,” Researcher Rachel Volberg, research professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology in the School of Public Health at the UMass Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences, said.

As of early May just about 950,000 unique users in Massachusetts have signed up to bet on sports online, according to the state gaming commission.

“Back in the day, we had to get on planes or get in cars and drive to Atlantic City or fly to Las Vegas,” Marty Tirrell, who is in recovery from problem gambling, said. “Now, it’s in the palm of your hand.”

That’s why a growing chorus is calling for Massachusetts to further tighten its restrictions on ads touting online sports betting, despite pushback from the industry.

“Because it’s new, there’s still a lot more that we have to do to make sure it is not actually having the same effects as those in the black market would have on those young people,” Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, a Democrat, said in an interview with anchor and investigative reporter, Kerry Kavanaugh.

She added: “When you have sports betting on an addictive device, it compounds it and makes it even more difficult for a resident or a consumer to, frankly, not become addicted to gambling.”