Sports betting is everywhere in 2024, including in the pockets of ASU students. Even ESPN, the biggest sports media company around, implemented "ESPN BET" in late 2023.
The fight for legalization and regulation of sports gambling continues to rage in many states, especially with the rise of online and app-based betting in the 2020s.
Daniel McIntosh, a marketing and sports business professor at W.P. Carey School of Business, said that a primary driver of sports gambling's recent explosion was the COVID-19 pandemic. Teams and leagues needed new sources of revenue after the pandemic took significant hits to their profits, and gambling partnerships were there to fill that void.
"It was kind of a perfect storm of forces coming together, with technology allowing (sports gambling) to be done from home and from the convenience of there, and the tracking and data that's associated with it," McIntosh said.
But with this rise in ease and convenience of sports betting comes a rapidly increasing, though not brand new, phenomenon: underage online betting.
A place like ASU, with thousands of sports fans under the Arizona legal gambling age of 21, is particularly vulnerable to the related consequences.
Luke, an ASU sophomore, is one such affected student.
Luke said for three to four months last year, he would bet on games every day. Though only around $5 a day in this span, the cash added up quickly.
"Social media has kind of shown all the upsides to sports betting, and it sucks, but I really do think that I fell for that trap," Luke said.
He said he would check the best NBA bets of the day as soon as he woke up. The habit of gambling took over the fun he once had.
Luke said he realized he had a problem after betting on games he wasn’t even watching, "like Pistons vs. Wizards at 4:30 on a Thursday afternoon" or "Trae Young's over in assists on a random game on a Tuesday night."
Luke isn't alone, either. He estimated that potentially 75% of his demographic (college student sports fans) have bet at least once, and he said he wouldn’t be surprised if half bet somewhat regularly.
A 2023 NCAA study corroborated these estimates, finding that 58% of 18- to 22-year-olds have placed at least one sports bet and that 67% of students on college campuses are bettors.
Pat Evans, a writer for Legal Sports Report who covers the legal battles around sports betting, said that he’s heard anecdotally that even "a lot of high schoolers are betting on illegal apps."
Luke said it’s "really easy" to bet illegally in Arizona, despite the age requirement of 21. What he and many others like him use to bypass this law is an app called Fliff. Though technically legal, both Luke and Evans are critical of its use of loopholes.
"They're finding ways around regulations that allow them to offer their product to younger people," Evans said. "They can claim they're legal, but there's nothing necessarily outlining that they are legal."
Fliff doesn't check for age because it identifies itself as a sweepstakes app or a “social sportsbook” rather than a gambling site. Fliff's system operates on two currencies. Users spend money on "Fliff Coins," which are valueless and the key to this loophole, according to Luke.
A dollar buys you 5,000 Fliff Coins, but you get a promotional dollar's worth of "Fliff Cash," a virtual currency that users can actually make money off of.
Users also can't withdraw their winnings until they've reached $50 in profit, according to Luke. You could win a bet and make $10 in Fliff Cash, but you have to keep winning to get to the $50 threshold in order to actually cash in on winnings.
This especially promotes unhealthy gambling habits and seems designed to keep people betting on the app. With an audience that consists of many underage bettors, too, practices like these could prove dangerous.
This isn't just Fliff, though. McIntosh said these kinds of tactics are also prevalent in legal sportsbooks.
"There are incentive structures in place that are psychological biases that are capitalized by the gaming industry, where they make these things potentially very addictive," he said.
The dangers are real, but Luke is unsure if students with gambling problems will seek help. Fliff, itself, doesn't advertise any kind of gambling helpline or have any visible safety infrastructure, he said.
"In some ways, it is kind of a thing that you have to figure out on your own," Luke said.
This may be a sad reality for students struggling with gambling issues. This apparent lack of help, paired with the taboos already surrounding illegal gambling, doesn't seem to open the door for asking for help.
McIntosh said that though underage, illegal betting is certainly happening to some extent, he doesn't believe that extreme cases of addiction are common on campus.
Luke said the University's attitude toward gambling and lack of outreach surrounding the problem reflects this opinion, despite ASU offering mental health resources and counseling through Educational Outreach and Services.
"I know that ASU has really sent out a lot of stuff about mental health, but I haven't seen anything that's been super specific to gambling, drugs or alcohol," Luke said. "In some ways, I do think that that's ASU acting like they're naive to the reputation that their school has, and just pushing that off to the side."
Edited by Sophia Braccio, Sadie Buggle and Alexis Heichman
Reach the reporter at adirst@asu.edu and follow @andrewdirst on X.
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Andrew is a junior studying journalism and mass communication. This is his third semester with The State Press. He has also worked at The Arizona Republic.
