Kindbridge Research Institute’s Financial Stability and Responsible Gambling Initiative, launched in partnership with UCLA, on Tuesday released a report, Gambling-Related Financial Harm: A Public Health Approach to Financial Stability in a Digital Era, which examines how gambling has become more digitally embedded in everyday financial life and why early indicators of harm often go undetected.
Drawing on insights from the FSRG Initiative’s cross-sector working group, the report finds that gambling in the United States has rapidly shifted from a largely cash-based activity to a normalized digital experience embedded in everyday financial life. As online platforms expand the range of bettable products and instant payment tools make it easier to wager in real time, spending and losses can become harder to recognize, often remaining invisible within traditional financial health indicators until harm intensifies.
“Financial stress linked to gambling often appears long before people reach crisis or clinical care,” FSRG Initiative Project Lead Kary Carbone said in a statement. “But today those signals are scattered across financial, healthcare, and payment systems that rarely connect the dots. This report highlights why earlier coordination could help identify risk sooner and prevent harm from escalating.”
The report also highlights the clinical effect of gambling-related financial stress.
“Financial harm is often one of the earliest and most damaging consequences of problematic gambling behavior,” said UCLA Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Co-Director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program Dr. Timothy Fong. “By the time people reach clinical care, the financial fallout can already be severe. This report underscores the need for prevention strategies that connect financial wellbeing and mental health earlier in the trajectory.”
Insights from the report include:
- Normalization of gambling is accelerating, with widespread marketing and expanding product availability outpacing public health, financial, and regulatory frameworks.
- Instant funding and frictionless payments can increase risk, including one-click transactions and digital wallets that may reduce the perceived pain of paying.
- Financial literacy has not kept pace with product complexity, leaving many consumers, especially young adults, without adequate safeguards.
- Responsibility for prevention remains fragmented across sectors, limiting coordinated prevention and early intervention across finance, payments, gambling platforms, healthcare, and regulators.
As gambling becomes more accessible through digital platforms and instant payment tools, the report highlights gambling-related financial harm should be understood as a financial stability and public health issue, not solely as an individual clinical concern. Financial stress linked to gambling often emerges long before people reach clinical care, creating opportunities for earlier identification and prevention.
The report calls for stronger coordination across sectors to recognize signals sooner and support prevention before harm escalates.
The Financial Stability and Responsible Gambling Initiative is the first coordinated U.S. effort to confront gambling-related financial harm as a public health and financial stability issue. Launched by Kindbridge Research Institute in partnership with UCLA, the initiative brings together cross-sector stakeholders to develop practical strategies that reduce preventable harm and strengthen early prevention and intervention.
