Sen. Blumenthal addresses bill to curb gambling addiction

Earlier today, Connecticut’s senior U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D) held a press conference to address his recent proposal of the SAFE Bet Act, a bill he co-sponsored with the U.S. Representative Paul Tonko (D-Albany, NY) which aims to place restrictions on online sports betting in an attempt to curb gambling addiction . The bill intends to limit online sportsbooks’ accessibility, affordability, and targeted-marketing techniques.

“The gambling sports betting industry in Connecticut and around the country is exploding,” said Blumenthal. “This industry is growing astronomically, and so is the problem of addictive gambling.”

Connecticut first legalized sports betting in May 2021, with online sports gambling going online in October 2021. Although the impact of online gambling on state revenue projections was at first overprojected by the state’s Office of Fiscal Analysis in 2022, online gambling revenue has increased dramatically since it was first implemented. According to OFA statistics , the state brought in $37.92 million through online gambling from Oct. 2021 to Oct. 2022, the first full-year of its implementation. The state’s most current 12-month statistics show practically double the revenue; from May 2023 to May 2024, the state has recorded $71.11 million.

While the revenue to be made off of states’ legalization of gambling is undeniable, so too is its potential for increasingly high levels of gambling addiction argued Blumenthal, as well as several members of the state’s Council on Problem Gambling (CTCPG) who also spoke at the conference.

“We used to say, prior to the legalization of online gambling, if you lived within forty miles of a casino, the odds doubled that you would become a problem gambler,” said Diana Goode, Executive Director of the CTCPG. Goode said that online gambling has essentially made it so that “everybody has a casino in their house,” and that this ease of access makes the potential for addiction exponentially greater than it was before. “The industry is targeting you,” said Goode.

Valerie Tebbetts, the CTCPG’s Helpline Manager as well as a self-proclaimed recovering addict, said that the introduction of online gambling has greatly increased the number of gamblers who have called the state’s gambling addiction hotlines, and has drastically changed the demographics of problem-gamblers. She said that while the majority of callers used to be older people of an even gender-distribution, they are now receiving an increased number of calls concerning younger, predominantly male-addicts.

“It used to be about a 50-50 split and now it’s more like 75-25, with males dominating,” said Tebbetts. “The calls we get from parents have increased dramatically, and they’re not necessarily parents of teenagers. These are parents of young men, which is 21 to 35, that have maybe graduated from college, they’ve got their first job, they have their own money, living at home, trying to save money to start their life in a really difficult, challenging economic time.”

Blumenthal explained that the bill would intend to put limits on three specific elements of online gambling: its accessibility, its affordability, and the use of algorithmic, targeted-advertising. Blumenthal explained that the bill would ban sportsbook advertising during live sporting events, and during “certain hours when children would be exposed.”

It would also mandate that problem gamblers have the option to bar themselves from receiving promotions, bonuses, and other gambling incentives. These offers, which typically make the entries to gambling cheaper, are often used by gambling platforms to specifically target problem gamblers in an effort to entice them to gamble more.

Lastly, it would prohibit sportsbooks from utilizing artificial intelligence to track players’ gambling habits and generate live prop bets (bets placed on player or game-specific statistics separate from the total outcome, the odds and parameters of which are constantly updated during the course of games). Blumenthal said that the use of AI for the purpose of targeted-marketing is especially dangerous, because sportsbooks are incentivized to target those gamblers which have bet and lost the most.

“The blunt simple truth is, this industry targets losers,” said Blumenthal. “That’s the way the industry wins; the industry targets the losing gamblers because it makes the industry a winner.”

Blumenthal said that he hopes stringent standards are imposed federally because current state standards for gambling are “half-baked and fainthearted, including in Connecticut.” He described the measures as simply introducing an aspect of “fair play” regulation to the industry, that otherwise has no incentive to implement on its own.

“There’s no way we can expect it of them [sportsbooks], because they’d also have to restrict their business model and their bottom line and they show no sign of doing so,” said Blumenthal. “So this legislation I proposed just in the past few days, I hope will provide an impetus for reform, and set these kinds of national standards so that we have fewer losers in the country in terms of permanent, enduring effects on people’s lives.”

He later said that while he thought the states’ rollout of legalized sports and online betting could have been done more responsibly, that he did not blame state legislatures as it would have been hard to predict the means through which sportsbooks would target those most susceptible to addiction.

“In fairness to legislatures around the country, maybe they couldn’t have envisioned the algorithms and artificial intelligence that would have been used in such a scientific and relentless way to target problem gamblers,” said Blumenthal.

The speakers repeatedly stressed that the purpose of the bill is not to act as a damper on the fun of those who gamble responsibly, but rather make it harder for the industry to prey on those who gamble irresponsibly.

“We’re not saying gambling should be banned, at least I’m not, but we need to impose safeguards and guardrails for this industry,” said Blumenthal. “It’s fine to gamble but the industry should be barred from exploiting and using people just because gambling is made legal.”

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