Gambling
Story Stream
The Last Sportswriters of New York March 11, 2025
On a warm, misty January morning, Phil Mushnick is sitting in his Boca Raton townhouse where he now winters. He points out the herons in the lagoon near his back porch as well as an adjacent golf course, a thousand miles from his central Jersey home ...
Hi, My Name Is Allan, and I’m a Compulsive Gambler March 11, 2025
I started gambling in the hallways of my middle school in Chicago when I was 9 or 10. My friends and I would play some corrupted version of poker; we’d give each other no interest loans, and be late for class.I didn’t know it then, but this was the b...
On Sports Gambling Regulation & Sports Gambling March 10, 2025
“Gambling is inevitable. No matter what is said or done by advocates or opponents of gambling in all its various forms, it is an activity that is practiced, or tacitly endorsed, by a substantial majority of Americans.” So begins a 1976 report from th...
Against All Odds February 13, 2025
In the decades to come, when the Super Bowl is called the Caesars Sportsbook Cup, FanDuel offers odds on fourth-grade T-ball, and activities historically unpopular in betting circles—such as Olympic canoeing, say—are plagued by gambling-related capsi...
It’s Not Too Late to Ban Online Sportsbook February 04, 2025
There is no joy in the Greenmount off-track betting parlor in Hampstead, Maryland. It is 1pm on a Friday, and the handful of bettors lounging in front of the TVs look something between bored and miserable, the sort of long-suffering faces you associa...
Is the Online Sportsbook Bubble About to Burst? November 19, 2024
Shohei Ohtani walks up to home plate at New York’s Citi Field, and the L.A. Dodgers fans, who are well in attendance on this Wednesday afternoon, are up on their feet....
The Woman Who Defined the Great Depression November 13, 2024
Sanora Babb spent her life dealing with all the multifarious daily perils that prevent writers from writing. She was raised in poverty by a mother who was only 16 when she gave birth to her and an abusive father who spent his days playing semi-pro ba...
Robert De Niro’s Billion-Dollar Gamble September 25, 2024
No disrespect to Toronto, Vancouver, downtown L.A., Sydney or all the other cost-effective shooting locations that have stood in for New York onscreen, but people can always tell. Imagine if Scorsese had filmed Taxi Driver in Burbank or if HBO had sh...
An Unsafe Bet September 25, 2024
You can’t turn on a game, of any professional sport, at any time, and not be immediately inundated with the betting line. Open the ESPN or other sports app and you’ll be greeted with the spread for upcoming games. Pull up a podcast about sports and y...
Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Huge Mistake September 24, 2024
Over the weekend, millions of Americans watched football. They cheered, they ate, and—more than ever—they gambled. The American Gaming Association expects $35 billion in bets to be placed on NFL games in 2024, about one-third more than last year’s to...
Sports Betting Is Leading to More Bankruptcies August 20, 2024
In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, setting into place an environment that allowed for the widespread legalization of sports betting.From 2018 to the present, 38 states legalized sports gambl...
Our Dystopian Future Is Inside Your Gambling App May 07, 2024
Earlier this month, basketball player Jontay Porter, former Toronto Raptors benchwarmer, saw his short and unimpressive NBA career come to an abrupt end. This severe penalty stems from his involvement in a gambling scheme that exploited his access to...
Dave & Buster’s Is Taking a Sinister Gamble May 02, 2024
Have you ever wanted to put a little action on a game of skee-ball at an iconic arcade emporium with locations all over the country? Congratulations. You’re finally in luck.Dave & Buster’s will soon introduce a wagering component to its arcade games,...
The NBA Just Banned a Player for Life April 22, 2024
Sports leagues make a lot of money off of people betting on their games. It is now almost impossible to watch an entire American sporting event and not be reminded of the leagues’ multimillion-dollar partnerships with DraftKings, FanDuel, and other s...
Unpacking the Shohei Ohtani Scandal April 09, 2024
There’s an eight-second clip of former baseball superstar Pete Rose making the rounds. He’s out somewhere, maybe a casino in Vegas, where the eighty-two year old now lives, and he looks out from under his ballcap to declare: “Well, back in the 70s an...
Gambling Is Ruining Sports April 05, 2024
For decades, Las Vegas was the only place in the country where sports betting was legal. And once upon a time, the men who ran the major sports leagues were terrified of betting. The great fear was that it would corrupt the players, who would be temp...
Society Is Becoming Addicted to Sports Gambling April 04, 2024
As the MLB season ramps up and NBA season winds down, both leagues are making headlines with rather bizarre gambling scandals. ESPN revealed last month that at least $4.5 million was sent to an illegal bookmaker from the bank account of baseball’s be...
The Future of American Sports Isn’t Pretty April 04, 2024
Last month, a scandal broke when representatives of the Los Angeles Dodgers released a statement alleging that Ippei Mizuhara, the Japanese-language interpreter for the once-in-a-century talent Shohei Ohtani, had stolen $4.5 million of Ohtani’s money...
Online Gambling Is Changing Sports for the Worse April 01, 2024
For the past twenty or so years, my friend Chad and I have gone to Las Vegas for the first weekend of the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament. Memory often fails when it comes to gambling, but I believe the only year we’ve skipped was 2020, when COVID-19 ...
The Tragedy of Pete Rose March 28, 2024
Pete Rose never goes away. He’s still here in body, of course, now 82, surely this very second signing everything in sight at a memorabilia show in a medium-size convention hall somewhere across this great land, telling whoever’s willing to pay him a...
We Don’t Know Shohei Ohtani, and That’s Not Helping Him March 27, 2024
“I’m very saddened and shocked that someone who I trusted has done this,” Shohei Ohtani said — through a translator, of course; Ohtani’s lack of comfort speaking English is increasingly becoming a plot point in this ongoing story — at a press confere...
The Shohei Ohtani Gambling Story Doesn’t Make Sense March 22, 2024
When news broke that Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, had been accused of stealing $4.5 million from the baseball superstar to pay down gambling debts with a California bookie, it was already one of the more consequential sports stories o...
Sports Gambling Was a Gateway Drug March 05, 2024
DraftKings would love it if you bet on the Knicks game. Oh, and while you're at it, why don't you hop over to its casino app and try out a little online blackjack? And wouldn't it be neat to eventually toss a few bucks on some lottery tickets, too?Wh...
