For most of the last 80 years, sports betting was limited to Las Vegas. But after a 2018 Supreme Court decision loosened regulations on professional sports wagers, it became possible to place bets on games 24/7 – with nothing more than a smartphone and a bank account (and apps from Vegas institutions like MGM and Caesar’s.)
In 2013, Just five years prior to the landmark SCOTUS case, gambling was classified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) in a new category called “Substance-Related and Addictive Disorders.” This grouped gambling with alcohol use disorder and other addictions. Gambling is also known to have the highest suicide rate of any addiction.
Fast forward to 2026, and sports gambling companies like FanDuel and DraftKings are being accused of employing aggressive tactics to attract users and keep them betting. In this week’s STATus Report, host Alex Hogan explains what methods like microbets, profit boosts, VIP hosts, etc. look like in practice and how he himself fell for some too-good-to-be-true promotions when the apps came to his home state of Massachusetts.
Full episode of First Opinion podcast:
0:00 Intro
0:57 The app rollout in Massachusetts
1:35 How introductory promos work
4:43 The growth of sports gambling
5:13 VIP hosts and microbets
6:45 How apps track user data
8:02 Potential legal liability?
9:27 Outro
More from STAT:
Become a subscriber:
Watch Full Episodes:
Newsletters:
STAT events:
Facebook:
Twitter:
Instagram:
Flipboard: rb.gy/3xnsxr
STAT Reports:
STAT eBooks:
ABOUT STAT:
Founded in 2015, STAT is a global digital media brand that focuses on delivering fast, deep, and tough-minded journalism about the life sciences industries to over six million monthly site visitors and an additional 20 million readers on the Apple News app. STAT takes you inside academic labs, biotech boardrooms, and political backrooms, casting a critical eye on scientific discoveries, scrutinizing corporate strategies, and chronicling the roiling battles for talent, money, and market share. With an award-winning newsroom, STAT provides indispensable insights and exclusive stories on the technologies, personalities, power brokers, and political forces driving massive changes in the life sciences industry — and a revolution in human health.
This article was gathered automatically by our news bot. We help YouTubers by driving traffic to them for free. The featured image in this article is the thumbnail of the embedded video. Thank you for visiting Win Big Sports Network and wbsnsports.com. For more sports, news, and entertainment, follow us on Twitter @WBSNsports or like our page on Facebook.
#Lines #Picks #Handicapper
