Responsible Gambling Campaigns Suck

Why self-regulation never works

A billboard from the American Gaming Association’s “Have a Game Plan. Bet Responsibly” campaign

Two weeks ago ESPN launched “The Talk,” a new campaign which “blends education, humor and actionable resources to capture attention and emphasize the importance of responsible gaming”—i.e. gambling. In a press release, Kevin Martinez, Vice President of ESPN Corporate Citizenship, said the company believes “it’s our responsibility to help sports fans understand the risks of sports betting and learn what smart betting looks like.”

The campaign, like all others of its kind, sucks.

Part of it is the content. Anything written by a ‘Corporate Citizenship’ team is going to sound like a ChatGPT response trained on HR presentations, and it does.

Part of it is the focus on responsible gaming tools such as time and deposit limits, which barely anyone uses because no one thinks of themselves as in need of regulation. Even Lebron James touting their usefulness won’t change this; if anything, hearing a billionaire talk about imposing loss limits makes the tools seem even less serious.

Part of it is the framing of sports betting as a game of skill while simultaneously saying it’s impossible to win. (ESPN defines smart play as “research[ing] the teams, players and stats involved, as well as any trends that could influence the outcome,” but also that smart play is about “spending what you're comfortable losing. Because, yes, that is going to happen!”)

Part of it is the absence of the universally agreed on best advice for casual sports bettors, which is to compare prices at different operators. Sportsbooks—like the one ESPN has attached its name to—dislike this practice because it forces them to offer more competitive prices and results in players losing less money.

Part of it is the misalignment of incentives. Companies profiting from gambling are not motivated to help gamblers be more responsible, especially when the majority of their profits come from a few giant losers.

But the main reason these campaigns suck is because they frame everything around personal responsibility. They point fingers at the user to avoid scrutiny of their own predatory practices and product design. They point fingers at the user so they can tell policymakers they’re combating the problem and avoid regulation. They point fingers at the user so we focus on individual weakness, instead of the environment designed to exploit those weaknesses.

This isn’t a problem unique to gambling. No industry wants to be regulated, especially not in a way that will meaningfully reduce their profits. But self-regulation always fails. It failed with alcohol, it failed with tobacco, it failed with opioids, and if we don’t act soon it will fail with gambling.

Gambling companies maintain that additional regulation is wholly unnecessary—that they care about customers over profits, that only a tiny number of users have problems, that the benefits of a casino in our pockets 24/7 outweigh the harms. I’d bet they’re wrong.