Chasing Losses: The Modern-Day Sports Gambling Enigma

Sports Gambling is becoming more exposed and accessible to youth, bringing personal issues for gamblers and money in for companies.

By Fabian Anguiano

In my freshman article, Bad Beats? Rangers Share Their Thought on Sports Betting, I searched for the reasoning behind young people’s motives for sports gambling at such a young age.

This article offers a much more enhanced perspective, with Saul Malek, a former Sports Gambling addict turned keynote speaker; Dan Field, a Sports Gambling therapist based in Los Angeles; and Rachel Volberg, who is a professor of Epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Saul Malek placed his first sports bet, which was on baseball in 2017 at the age of nineteen while attending Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

What got Malek to place a sports bet in the first place was the fact that a good friend of his had a bookie, and he suggested that Malek should try it out.

At the time, Malek didn’t think much of it. He believed he knew sports pretty well, and he believed it would be a nice way to make money. It seemed like an innocent activity at first.

That seemingly innocent activity would turn south within a month and a half, “ I remember I wasn’t able to get in bed on time at the end of that night, and I remember feeling this anxiety, this sort of itchy feeling in my head that was almost like a withdrawal feeling because I’ve been gambling pretty steadily up until then,” said Malek

What caused Malek to keep going for more was the idea that you can get a big win. Malek believed that he would be able to recapture the euphoria of winning early wins had given him. 

Sports Gambling can have the same effect as drugs and alcohol, “Where a person’s built up a tolerance to it. So I didn’t know it at the time, but I feel I really needed it chemically because my brain craved the dopamine, that excitement, just to feel normal at a certain point, and so I was doing it just subconsciously.”

Malek added to this, “Then some of it also at the end was just the fear of how I am going to make money to pay these debts I have in a quick manner. The quickest way is to just seemingly place another sports bet.”

The lying and the debt he was in were an indication that Malek was addicted, even when the consequences grew larger.

The first time Malek got in debt due to Sports Gambling, his parents bailed him out. He was given more credit, and then he would proceed to bet all of that away.

Having to owe so much gave Malek major anxiety, “I had all these different creditors and anxiety that came with the unknown of what’s going to happen if I don’t pay these people. Who’s going to come after me? What are the consequences going to be? So there’s a lot of anxiety that comes with building financial pressure and hiding that from people too,” said Malek.

Sports Gambling would come at the cost of Malek’s academics. There was an easy science class while Malek was attending college where it was supposed to be an easy A for everyone in the class.

Malek would sit in the back of the class and would watch tennis matches every morning; not paying attention would cause Malek to fail the class and force him to retake the class during summer school.

Malek’s actions in Sports Gambling were dictated by, “Compulsion, impulse. There was no rational decision-making on my part, and that’s a very dangerous way to live. So I would say it’s lying to people, relationships, lying to my parents, lying to my girlfriend about my behavior, running up all this debt, not sleeping well because I would check scores of random games early in the morning.”

Malek was a slave to the addiction; it was a mental prison, and it was an insane place to be.

Malek would return to his parents in Houston, Texas, in the summer of 2018. At that point, Malek was twenty thousand dollars in debt, and he had to admit to his parents the hole he had dug himself into. 

When Malek started his junior year of college, his parents pushed him to join a Gamblers Anonymous therapy group.

Malek wouldn’t take the therapy seriously until, “My girlfriend broke up with me right before my senior year of college; that was the final straw. I had no relationship with my parents then, all this debt. I wasn’t even sure if I was going to get to go back to college and finish my degree.”

The severity of the consequences made Malek realize that he could die from them. Many people who are extremely addicted to Sports Gambling take their own lives. In a study done by Phys.Org, it was found that since dozens of states legalized Sports Gambling, hotline calls and suicide rates in states that legalized online sportsbooks increased by the time of the study’s completion.

After graduating college in 2020, Malek had planned to go to graduate school to be an addictions counselor or therapist.

Around 2022, Malek realized the advertisement of Sports Gambling all over, and he figured, why not go back to his high school and share his experience. 

Malek believes the media and advertisers have made Sports Gambling unavoidable in society, ” A person can’t watch a professional sporting event without being bombarded by gambling content. Even Instagram feeds become saturated with Sports Gambling content.”

Malek felt motivated as he saw many young people get involved in gambling, and although Malek is not opposed to gambling itself, he knows how slippery the slope could be.

Malek has had the privilege of sharing his experiences on big stages such as Dr. Phil; he has also gotten to talk with The New York Times regarding his experiences.

Malek believes that a lot of young people seem to overestimate their ability to be successful when it comes to Sports Gambling, “If you’re a young guy who’s watched sports since you were three years old and you have a favorite team and you’re smart and you know numbers, there’s not really much to it. I just pick a team and collect my winnings, so it seems like a quick way to make some money. There’s the thrill to it,” said Malek.

There is also a social aspect to it; if you have a group of people sitting around a TV, eager to see if their parlay hits, it adds an exhilaration to it.

Malek believes Sports Gambling is becoming dangerous for younger people because, “The brain isn’t fully developed, and you find yourself just gambling for the sake of it, without even really consciously being aware of it.”

Some solutions Malek believes could reduce this problem is, “Earlier education is certainly important. One of the other things that some people talk about, which could be useful, is tighter restrictions on advertisers, on what’s allowed to be displayed over social media, you know, certain restrictions, tighter restrictions on things like prediction markets,” said Malek

Dan Field is a clinical director at Westside Gambling Treatment, which is located in Los Angeles, California.

Sports Gambling can become an addiction in almost an instant. Some early warning signs of addiction are watching games they have no interest in and beginning to break self-imposed rules about types of bets they are going to make.

An example of this is, “Nine-game parlays, or doing just really crazy bets that really have no chance of hitting, spending a lot of time thinking about gambling, planning out ways to get money to gamble with,” said Field.

What causes people to keep going back for more is the dopamine rush they are feeling, which is not normal. At some point, the person needs to stop and get themselves back into reality and take a look at the bigger picture.

Someone who is experiencing this is like someone who is ,“Getting high on cocaine or a stimulant; when you’re in action and doing live betting, it’s like you’re at a slot machine and kind of losing your mind. Some degree of self-awareness that you’re spending too much money, you’re acting crazy while you’re live betting.”

Going on a rampage like this starts to diminish your relationships because you are always on your phone, and you are always stressed. Your academics and your finances start to derail as you do.

The most common mental health struggle with Sports Gambling is often, “A low-level depression or a crossroads that young men, typically men, have at certain points in their lives where they don’t know what they want to do with their life. Instead of delving deep inside to answer some of these questions, like what is my purpose, what do I want to contribute to the world, there’s the easy answer of gambling,” said Field.

This is constantly promoted by influencers and marketing apparatus that manipulate people by creating portfolios, whether it’s sports players or cards; whatever way is a viable way for financial prosperity.

Young men tend to be more competitive by nature, “They may have played sports, so they think that they have an edge. If I play basketball, maybe I’m better at betting on basketball, and they have the experience of an early win. They hit a parlay, and they won, you know, $1,200 with a $50 wager, and they think, wrongly, and with some sense of distortion that I did it before, I could do it again.”

Some may believe that it was a well-placed bet, when in reality it is the complete opposite. Big wins early on, especially for people under the age of 18, create a desire for more of that euphoria. They continue chasing that feeling, and then all they are going to get is a gambling disorder at the end of the day.

In the eyes of a Sports Gambling Therapist like Field, this problem is only becoming more common. Field receives phone calls every day from gamblers and the families of gamblers who are abashed by their own behavior or the behavior of their loved one.

Causes for this are the fact that prediction markets like Klashi have lowered the barrier for younger gamblers, making it more accessible, and even the overall design of the website can make it addictive.

Dr. Rachel Volberg is one of the world’s leading experts in Sports Gambling, having been doing research on it since 1985.

Volberg believes Sports Betting Operators are targeting younger people with, “Advertisements and inducements, which have led to higher sports betting participation rates among young people.”

As far as who is to blame, Volberg would argue that operators, legislators, and regulators have not done a good job of minimizing the risks associated with sports betting involvement.

Sports Gambling operators are using celebrity advertising, influencer targeting, and other tactics to promote themselves. Volberg has found emerging research that groups targeted with advertising, such as young adults, those involved with Sports Gambling, and those with problematic alcohol use, are susceptible to their advertising efforts.

Sports Gambling is now a common topic in today’s society, being brought up in sports broadcasting and sporting events.

Operators have strong ties to some of the biggest sports organizations, such as the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, etc. All of this is being pushed by organizations in order to build out Sports Gambling platforms.

Youth are more vulnerable to falling into this trap as impulse control and decision-making in their brains are still developing. It does not help the fact that Sports Gambling is so accessible through digital devices.

Sports Gambling can easily become a roadblock to concentrating on academics; financial losses, stress, and staying up late to follow games will interfere with overall academic performance.

Betting on sports at a young age will eventually lead to problems as an adult, as it can interfere with careers, relationships, and any other long-term goals.

Before I first started working on this story, I didn’t understand how people could keep going back over and over again to Sports Gambling even after it affects them financially and personally. It was until I interviewed these three individuals that I realized what truly has caused this epidemic. Sports Gambling is advertised almost everywhere. Since the day I got the first interview for this article, I became more aware of how heavily it is being pushed by the sports industry in general and by influencers; from podcasters to college football games, it is inescapable, and it is something that, from what I am seeing, will most likely never end. As to why people keep going back for more, I have realized that the sensation of a victory in anything in general causes people to chase that euphoria once again, and Sports Gamblers will risk it all to receive the feeling of winning once again by any means necessary. I now understand that youth Sports Gamblers are not perpetrators; they are victims to the system.

Fabian Anguiano ’28,

Tags: fabian anguiano, gigantea, journalism, Redwood, sports, sports betting, sports gambling, the branch