Since 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court dissolved a 1992 federal law that previously restricted sporting betting to a few states and Native American tribal land; sports gambling has become so popular that its reach feels inescapable.
Advertisements for apps like DraftKings and FanDuel are high on billboards and plastered on our social media feeds. You can’t even watch live sports on television without the odds of any number of bets cycling down at the bottom of your screen.
According to data from Similarweb, a website traffic tracker, two years ago these apps were pulling in anywhere from two to six million monthly users, but as of September 2023, the monthly users reached well over 16 million. Since sports betting apps have compounded on the gambling scene, their impacts on the way we view college and professional sports have been put on a national stage for all to see.
But under the gold and glamor of this new kind of sports entertainment is a gambling epidemic that is being felt on college campuses across the country.
