EDITORIAL: Sports betting ads are out of control. For solutions, look overseas.

Thursday, August 1, 2024 7:39 PM
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  • Editorial Board, The Washington Post

The Paris Olympics are well underway, which means sportsbooks are calculating and offering odds, or “over-unders,” for everything from how many points and assists basketball superstar LeBron James will produce to swimmer Katie Ledecky’s final medal count. Not coincidentally, Olympics rules allow NBCUniversal, which is providing live coverage of the events, to run ads from betting companies — and the network expects to break ad sales records from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. There appears to be an accompanying surge in online sports betting.

The online sports betting market exploded across the United States after the Supreme Court gave states the power to set their own regulations in 2018.