'The Gamble' shows high financial, social stakes of widespread sports gambling
I got Pat's money line on this one
How much did you put on it About $800
I bet every day
Football season
I'm a Sundays guy
DraftKings prize picks
Then they had this bonus bet thing come up where
you bet $5 they give you $200
I bet 550 $550
Yeah did you win that bet I did not and
I've spent $800 on betting
Thousands definitely thousands yeah 3000 to $40,000 but I probably
spent as much as $5000 probably won as much as
$5000 for sure 10 over $10,000 for sure
I sometimes look at my banking account
I'm like did I really spend like spend that much
It's the joy of spending low money to get a
big reward
So basically like 8 leg parlays 10 leg parlays a
click of the fingertips to just get that dopamine hit
of maybe winning a small bet
It's definitely the parlays because you bet a smaller amount
and hopefully get a bigger payout
Yeah I got a shirt that says no one cares
about your parlay and people still tell me about their
parlays
100% I'm addicted because I just like to bet
There's no win or lose
I just like to bet
Even if I lose I keep on going to chase
that oh I got to come back you know what
I mean Out of pocket I put probably like $5000
but I kept betting that over and over and over
again
It's well over $100,000 and betting the same money over
and over again
We just have this gambling culture now and we just
expect it
The WRAL documentary unit investigates the impact of legalized sports
betting in North Carolina
Sports betting won't be legal in North Carolina in time
for the Super Bowl next year
Sports betting is now legal in North Carolina and I
Taken to Cannes to win the Stanley Cup
How gambling is reshaping its people finances and future
What we've seen is that again it is far far
outgrown what they initially thought would be the revenue that
comes into the state
That's a success but honestly the timing of sports betting
It was absolutely critical for us
We were in a budget crisis and we're already seeing
the effects and a lot of people will point to
well hey there's a lot more tax revenue sure
Sure but at what cost The fastest growing addiction that
is destroying young men in their twenties is online sports
gambling
FanDuel is a portal to hell
DraftKings ain't king of nothing except their own pocketbook
You don't place your first bet thinking I'm gonna be
the person who ends up with gambling disorder
I didn't realize that that would be the catalyst for
what would eventually devolve into just an all consuming fixation
It's not just that I was gambling a little bit
or I was gambling every day it was that I
was gambling pretty much all day every single day
How much were these these bets I would probably say
200-300,000 on a weekend
Who makes the industry money it's those that have a
problem problem gambling or a gambling disorder
We would not be sustainable
We would not be durable as an industry if that
is the only thing we created
People will go into crippling debt over this and it
will destroy more and more lives as time goes on
It's like a handheld syringe
We didn't invent gambling in North Carolina
It had been happening for for well before I ever
got to the legislature and would continue whether or not
we passed sports betting or not
The truth is
This is an epidemic and only people who have gone
through it truly understand it how much you lie
You never win as much as you win and you
lose way more than you lose
Sports betting wasn't always so mainstream
This current form of legalized gambling everywhere is a relatively
new phenomenon
With the exception of Nevada sports betting was illegal until
a Supreme Court decision in 2018
People still gambled just not legally
We didn't have phones and we didn't have computers and
we didn't have algorithms and websites to get to
You would hear stories of I got a guy you
know
The guy at the bar we settle up every Friday
It was you know the underworld let's be honest
Someone will break your legs if you don't pay
I mean there was sort of this like seedy element
to it
Well now it's just totally accepted
Ads with huge celebrities like Kevin Hart are everywhere
$200 instantly
Just for betting 5 bucks
Superstars like LeBron James are in DraftKings commercials
Wait what They want somebody that can run a 40
not somebody that is 40
You're now looking at athletes who are active athletes playing
the games themselves as spokespeople for platforms that offer you
the opportunity to gamble
There's no one who doesn't mention the betting lines who
the favorite is who the underdog is
I mean you know it's on the crawl
UNC -3.5. I mean the numbers just have become part
of the sporting lexicon now in a way that that
before it was sort of like a secret you know
some people had access to that world now everyone has
access to it
Thank God I'm not alive and addicted for this stage
of gambling because I would be in the gutter
My name is Aaron Ward
I'm a former National Hockey League player
So my gambling actually started early
It started in college
Aaron Ward gambled at the University of Michigan where he
played hockey on scholarship when he was drafted 5th overall
by the Winnipeg Jets
He gambled in Detroit where he won 2 Stanley Cups
and as a Carolina Hurricanes where he won a 3rd
There was nothing that went on in my life at
the time I was gambling that I was not thinking
about gambling
Period
He placed all bets through a bookie using a friend
as the go-between
So football was my sole addiction
It was like a passion and I convinced myself it
was a passion but the game and the gambling had
control of me
He thought of his bets on the ice
Oh man
Well I think about the number of times that I
mean those those LED boards that
And circle the rink where they kept the score of
the college football games up there and I was not
only playing the hockey game in front of me but
I was also paying attention to the scores up there
You're not fully anywhere at all
I remember going to Saint Michael's the Archangel Church and
it was a Sunday and I'm in the pews wondering
what the temperature's going to be like in Green Bay
that day because snow might adversely affect how I play
that game
Every fall every Sunday for 20 years was spent betting
on football but you're kind of maintaining like I'll play
3 games this I'm up 10 or I'm down 10
I'll probably draw even the next one
I would probably say
2 300,000 on a weekend
And people are gonna be like But again it's you
get yourself in deep on this
Some friends knew
Oftentimes I was on the road they'd benefit from the
fact that I won
I'd take us out to bars pick up the tab
His family had no idea
So I was married 19 years and I hid it
from my wife the entire time
Were there times at which she suspected Absolutely
The crazy part is somehow I got away with it
This is how reckless you are
I mean there were times in which I had 200,000
to $30,000 in cash hidden in the trunk of my
car in a brick of hundreds and hell I was
using some of my gambling earnings to put upgrades on
my house and my wife had no idea at the
time how these things were being paid for but that's
how they're being paid for
He knew he needed help after the Seahawks Patriots Super
Bowl in 2015
75,000 on the Patriots and they're about to lose this
game
I was having an out of body experience thinking how
the hell am I going to pay for this
So the Seahawks throw the ball to the wide receiver
again inexplicably
It gets intercepted by the New England Patriots DB and
they don't score
You have never seen someone who is not a New
England Patriots fan I'm a Lions fan jump up and
down with a level of excitement like I had in
that moment and it was around my family and I
was unable to explain that that was a $150,000 swing
of an interception
Going from that fear to that euphoria
Required intervention that I was out of control
But true Rock Bottom came later that year
I came home in October of 200
15 and I was confronted with a million of my
choices
We first told you about Aaron Ward's arrest during our
news at 4 o'clock
Ward is charged with assault on a female and interfering
with an emergency communication
I ended up going to jail for domestic over basically
walking out with a computer
I spent 48 hours in jail
It played out publicly so my kids could not hide
from it
My wife at the time could not hide from it
I definitely could not hide from it
Lost my great job
And I was left to pick up the pieces
It's a tattoo on your soul
You wear that because Google never goes away
The most glamorous story when people have fall from grace
is always the first story
It's not the back end
So everybody's headline about former hockey player wrestler for domestic
if you really look into it that's not what it
was
The situation was also not just dismissed but it was
also expunged from my record
Ward went through intense therapy for years at the Duke
Behavioral Science Program through the NHL Players Association
He learned family history genes and trauma played a role
in his addiction
While I was in college I was also sexually molested
by a doctor at the school both when I was
17 and then again my sophomore year when I was
18
I would never come to grips with the molestation that
I experienced the
Narcissistic tendencies that I had as a human being
Ward hasn't bet since that Super Bowl in 2015
Only now do you understand the true damage you do
to not just yourself but everybody around you
Now Ward's underworld seemingly took over the world
The Message is we'll give you free 5 bucks for
your first play
I mean free money why not I'll just step in
and play that first play
But here's the thing
It's the match needed to light the powder keg
We're looking at a hard labor
Hey we hit right here
It's being targeted to young adults young males college age
students the same age Ward placed his first bet
There's so many things that go into being a young
man specifically that lends itself to you're the perfect demographic
that they want to touch on
Tonight
I bet um Quer's points
I bet our spread and uh the under
I took state to cover
I mean I hope I'm wrong but it's just a
it's just a hedge my happiness bet
How often do you bet When whenever the day is
right whenever I got a free pick you know you
make your money when the when the bucks give it
to you
This is
In their world right now ever present and we're gonna
have to dig a ton of kids out of credit
issues
When you take the already addictive nature of gambling you
combine it with the ease of these mobile apps and
how frictionless they make it the in-app notifications constantly badgering
you the peer pressure from your friends and then you're
throwing the odds stacked against you by computers that are
running these these bookies now you can't win
Nearly 60% of North Carolina undergrads gambled in the past
year
We know that up to 13% of our college males
are already suffering from at least one gambling-related harm
Half of problem gamblers start before 25 the same age
As most college seniors
But the problem is most young guys go I don't
have a problem
I'm just hanging out with my friends we're watching the
game
What's the big deal It's $1 here it's $5 there
and they don't realize what's actually happening in their brain
that they are now hooked
And I love this rush this anticipation this high that
comes about from even just placing a bet
Saul Malik was in college when he started betting and
it started so innocently with a little $10 bet on
a game of baseball late season baseball game that was
essentially meaningless
Malik was living in Texas where sports betting isn't legal
He had an offshore account
The bookie created an account for me online where I
could gamble whenever I chose with a line of credit
You can bet on
Tennis overseas you can bet on Japanese baseball
These were all available digitally and with all this credit
I thought well dang I can really push this and
make more money bet a few 100
It became all consuming
The frequency was daily and not just daily but hourly
however often I was able to because gambling to me
combines
All these elements I enjoyed a quick money
I love sports
I love feeling like a big shot
His rock bottom was the summer of 2019 and I
would say that culmination of the debt that I was
in which was around 20,000 to 250 is what I
estimate
I had no girlfriend
I was Potentially not going to finish my senior year
of college
My relationship with my parents was really awful
He got help through Gamblers Anonymous and now tells his
story publicly because I could see that this was killing
killing me killing my life
He's surrounded by sports betting every day
I've heard a lot from young men around my age
even younger who struggle with sports betting problems
The temptation is always out there
It is an unavoidable thing nowadays
Coming up how we got here what we're getting
At the end of the day it brings so much
more to our state and what we've lost
It kind of feels like blood money
There's no other way to say it
Even the lottery
I mean North Carolina has come a long way in
terms of their thinking on this right North Carolina was
very late in adopting the lottery and it took shenanigans
quite frankly at the legislature to get it to happen
You know some lawmakers took a walk
They weren't there on the day it came to vote
The president of the Senate votes aye
The lieutenant governor cast the tiebreaking vote to get this
Why Because it was gambling
It was gambling
This was in 2005 making North Carolina the 43rd state
to get a lottery
Nearly 20 years later Representative Jason Sain was leading the
charge on another form of legalized gambling sports betting and
it came from watching good friends of mine place bets
online which I I wasn't doing but I was watching
them doing it
And so they started explaining to me how they did
it with an offshore betting account
I said Well this doesn't seem right that North Carolina
one shouldn't get their fair share of the revenue from
it
And 2 how does it protect consumers Sain's first attempt
to legalize sports betting was in 2022
In a surprise vote state House lawmakers have rejected an
attempt to legalize online sports gambling
It failed by one vote
He tried again in 2023 really kind of uncovering what
the real objections were and then finding ways to overcome
them and it went through much easier
Sports betting is now legal here in North Carolina
Governor Cooper signing that bill into law today
The law passed in 2023 but you couldn't bet in
North Carolina until the spring of 2024
Right into March Madness
UNC was in the Sweet 16
Duke was in the Elite Eight
And when NC State made a historic run to the
Final Four I mean the numbers were through the roof
almost immediately and the tax revenue has far exceeded anything
that they thought it would
In 2024 the state projected $8.5 million in revenue
It actually brought in more than $41 million
The next year
Projections were $53 million
The actual number $121 million
It kind of validates what we were saying all along
that this was happening
Uh just the state wasn't having any say so in
it
The money made in taxes goes to several buckets
First fixed amounts come off the top $1 million each
to two statewide youth sports organizations $2 million to the
Department of Health and Human Services for gambling and addiction
treatment
$3.9 million split up between the athletic departments at 13
UNC colleges
After that the remaining revenue is split by percentage
50% goes to the general fund
That was $55 million last year
They're paying for schools and paying for roads and healthcare
and things of that nature
30% goes to the Major Events Games and Attractions Fund
$33.4 million last year
It was used to attract the MLS All-Star Game
It's been used to bring NASCAR races
We can start talking things like Super Bowls Olympics could
be on the table and the final 20%
Left over goes again to college athletics so they get
money twice
The athletic department at 13 UNC system schools not UNC
not NC State but everyone else gets a share and
they got about $2 million last year
UNC Pembroke is one of the 13 schools that receives
money from sports betting
We were in a budget crisis when COVID hit in
2020 and students started distance learning
That meant they stopped paying an athletic fee to lose
$1.1 million in student fees you know pretty much overnight
that's you can't fix that on a $5 million
Dollar budget you wouldn't be able to sustain 16 sports
450 athletes 70 employees he said
Money from sports betting may have saved some programs
It's been a major blessing is that now a lot
of that money goes to really good programs and good
things in the state
And so the fact that states are getting some money
out of this it kind of feels like blood money
There's no other way to say it
An irresponsible way to raise money for the state
Democratic Representative Marsha Morey a former US Olympic swimmer was
against legalizing sports betting in North Carolina
I believe in the purity of sports
We're finding people that are are fixers now that they're
enticing players to throw games
Proponents say legalizing actually catches cheaters by using algorithms
Fandel said they have a 600 person risk and trading
team monitoring all wagers
We really do think that this is the regulated market
working and we're hopeful that over time as athletes see
what happens that there will be less of this going
forward
Morey is also concerned about athlete harassment
We're seeing a huge increase
Of social media threats to college players
The National Collegiate Athletic Association reports 1 in 3 college
athletes have experienced betting-related harassment
Most of the harassment is over prop bets betting on
a player's points or specific plays
Armando Bacot a former UNC player talked about
After wins he would get messages in his in his
DMs on social media that would say you didn't grab
9 rebounds call him every name in the book
I looked at my DMs and I got like over
100 messages from people telling me I sucked and stuff
like that because I didn't
Get enough rebounds
Kelly Crosby with the North Carolina Department of Health and
Human Services said this is having a real impact and
we have seen an increase in mental health symptoms in
our athletes
That's just what the research is showing us Jason Sain
lawmaker turned lobbyist said Criticism comes with the territory
Athletes are in the public sphere they're going to get
criticized period
That happens
Before sports betting it will happen after sports betting
That's just part of being in a public sport
So the argument that this would have happened anyway so
the fact that we would kind of just say well
it exists anyway to be OK with that we're not
OK with it number one we are not OK with
it at all
So we're definitely not OK with the fact that we've
introduced something that's even making it worse
Sports betting platforms will ban users caught harassing athletes
The NCAA has urged states to stop allowing prop bets
on college players
Prop bets are so lucrative and become such a part
of betting that I don't think operators are going to
willingly give that up
Morey sponsored two pieces of legislation banning prop bets
Neither made it out of committee
I would say just keep our lottery
Vote on the bouncing balls
Don't vote on the athletes
Coming up what if sports betting is just the beginning
The only limit is your imagination to what you can
do on these predictive markets
It was accessible before
One of the main arguments that helped push sports betting
across the finish line in North Carolina gambling was already
happening
That money was going out of the state to begin
with
That money was being spent
We haven't really necessarily changed behaviors except for the fact
that we've offered now something that's legal and a way
to capture that revenue and keep it back into the
state
Sports betting companies say billions of dollars are still
Being spent on illegal sites the American Gaming Association estimates
a total of more than $670 billion in illegal and
unregulated total wagers
But again that number comes from the industry
And so they say oh everyone was going to an
offshore book and black market and gambling so we're just
doing it now and collecting the tax revenue
Well I was but I'm a gambling addict and I
think that they're basically asserting that their standard customer was
doing the things that a gambling addict would do to
gamble
So yes I will concede the fact that you could
already gamble but we've just made it easy accessible highly
desirable highly attractive to anyone
According to NCDHHS calls to the state's gambling hotline are
up since legalization
We've seen a 50% increase in the number of people
over the past few years who call for help not
just call for information
They're literally calling for help
We've seen a 400% increase in the number of people
texting Joe Maloney president of the sports betting
Represents the five major sports books
Data such as increased call spike volume to 1-800-GAMBLER or
other problem gambling helplines is not necessarily anything to be
afraid of
Maloney says it shows people know where to turn for
help and allows states to make sure those support systems
are properly staffed and accessible
The money used to fund the state's gambling addiction program
comes from sports betting
In 2025 the eight legal sports betting companies in North
Carolina made $734.5 million
The state made $132.2 million
DHA
Jess got 2 million for problem gambling
I mean we're talking 1% of the money 2% of
the money going to the Department of Health and Human
Services
Do you think maybe you could use a little more
Yes I definitely say and again I don't mean to
be ungrateful for the 2 million that we get but
It truly it pales in comparison to the amount of
revenue that's coming into the state and unfortunately the $2
million that they have going to DHHS the vast majority
of that is going towards treatment and some education but
it's not enough to support everything
Michelle Malkin is the director of gambling Research and Policy
Initiative at East Carolina University
The federal government has put zero money into gambling
Research it's crazy when you compare that to other addictions
and how much money that goes into that
Researchers say people just don't know enough about gambling addiction
So really from a scientific brain chemistry point of view
there is no difference when we're talking about gambling addiction
and substance use disorder
However gambling disorder in and of itself has the highest
suicide rate of any addictive disorder
Bar none the sports betting companies say they don't want
their customers to become addicted as a whole
Legal regulated gambling throughout this country invests nearly half a
billion dollars annually to responsible gaming
We are in the business of creating sustainable levels of
play for all players
Maloney points to wager limits time restrictions or self-exclusion on
the apps
I know I would be in a gutter if I
had the accessibility that people do now
A lot of people relapse
It's a hard addiction to stay away from because
Gambling is everywhere
38 states offer sports betting
Many believe it's just the beginning
7 states now allow online casinos also called iGaming which
is basically a full casino on your phone
You'd be able to play blackjack or roulette or craps
poker maybe on your phone for real money and the
money to be made from iGaming just dwarfs anything that
is being made from sports betting
FanDuel operates
Sports betting in 25 states and i gaming in 5
It's not legal in North Carolina
The reality is just like with sports wagering i gaming
is happening because the internet and mobile devices exist
There are any number of offshore sites where one can
do iGaming and we really believe that we can offer
it with our robust suite of consumer protections
And then there are prediction markets like Cowsheet where you
can bet on anything
They say they're not sports gambling
In part because the house is not holding the bets
it's kind of like a stock market where you're betting
against others in the stock market and so you can
bet whether a team is going to win or a
team's going to lose or you can bet the price
of oil on a certain date in the future
It's just rife for insider trading
I see a future where gambling on everything becomes part
of our culture
The only limit is your imagination to what you can
do on these predictive markets
It's a slippery slope and one I think we're involved
in already