Author Jonathan D. Cohen on how sports gambling became a public health crisis

Gambling is a growing part of our sports-watching experience. You’ve seen the commercials, ads, and apps. In many ways, they’ve become inescapable. 

Is the ease of access to legalized wagering a problem? Author Jonathan D. Cohen thinks so.

His latest book is Losing Big: America’s Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling. Cohen, who argues that betting is a brewing crisis, recently appeared on The Daily Show with Michael Kosta.

We caught up with Cohen to discuss his book and why he believes the stakes could not be higher for America.

Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Awful Announcing: What made you write about sports gambling?

Jonathan D. Cohen: “My last book is on the state lottery system. That came out in 2022, and I had built up knowledge of gambling policy through that work. I’ve been a sports fan since I was 12, 13. As I was doing press for the lottery book, it was clear that something was changing in American sports with the rise of legal gambling. Like everybody else, my first exposure to it was the ads. I’ve developed this area of expertise on gambling policy. My initial interest was, ‘Let’s just figure out what’s going on.’ It was as simple as that.”

Why should someone buy your book?

“The book is the first attempt to sort of comprehensively capture how we got legal sports betting, to capture the causes and the consequences of the rise of legal sports betting in the U.S. I think lots of people are interested. A lot of people share my observation that something has fundamentally changed about sports and society, thanks to the rise of sports gambling. The book is sort of the first one to endeavor to say exactly how we got here, exactly where here is, and where we might be going as a result.”

Is sports wagering a public health crisis?

“Folks might be familiar with this group at Northeastern, the Public Health Advocacy Institute. It is treating gambling as a public health issue and has deemed it a crisis. I picked up on the language from them, and I profile their work in the book. Is it a public health crisis? What makes it so? Why is this a problem in America? With the caveat that every crisis is in the eye of the beholder. There’s no official designation for what constitutes a crisis.

“First of all, lots of people, predominantly young men, are losing more money than they can afford gambling on sports, or are developing either full-blown or sort of borderline gambling addictions. To me, that makes it a public health issue.”

How many people did you interview for your book?

“I don’t have a total number of people. The most important people I talked to are current and former gamblers. I’ve talked to maybe two dozen, whether it was gamblers, family and friends of gamblers, or people who have quit gambling or developed gambling addictions. That would be the most important sort of source base.”

Is there one gambler’s story that struck a nerve with you?

“This guy, he’s sort of the main character of the book. His name is Kyle. He had gambled a bunch of times in his life at casinos before the rise of legal sports betting. He only ran into trouble with gambling when it arrived on his phone when he was living in Colorado in 2020. At some point, he couldn’t pay his rent. His dad had to bail him out. Then he lost his job. He had to move back in with his parents. It completely disrupted his life. He had been able to gamble safely, but then, lo and behold, he gets into the cycle of loss chasing. He is betting on minor league British darts at three in the morning because he needs something to bet on. Only because of the lack of guardrails and the way it arrived, did he run into trouble.”

Are there things the government could be doing to help?

“The regulators or lawmakers have the ability to regulate friction into apps, which is what I think the goal should be. I think gambling should be legal. I think you should be able to bet. I think you should be able to bet a lot of money if you have a lot of money. But I think it should be really, really difficult, almost impossible, for someone to start betting casually and for that habit to snowball into a dangerous or unsafe or addictive behavior. So, forcing companies to figure out when someone is chasing their losses and to cut them off, or forcing companies to make players wait after they deposit their money until they can start gambling with it.”

What would you tell the person who says, ‘This doesn’t affect me. Why should I care?”

“Even before this, we had 1% of the American population that developed a gambling addiction. A large percentage of the American population will be affected either directly or indirectly by the rise of gambling. And whether it affects you personally, I don’t know. It’s not my job to get you to care about other people, but I think we should all care about other people.”

When was the last time you placed a bet?

“Just so I could say that I did it, the morning of my Daily Show appearance, I bet $5 on a Danish handball money line, and I won. So, changed my tune. Now, I think sports betting is great. I won $10. Catch me at the club later.”

What was it like being on The Daily Show?

“Michael Kosta is a former professional tennis player. Both of the gamblers I profile in the book found their way to gambling on tennis because it’s on at all hours of the night, and there are always different ways to bet. And so he was struck by those stories in particular because of his background. …I’ll never know if that’s what got me the interview or not, but I think it certainly helped the book resonate for him.”

What was the coolest part of the experience?

“Honestly, the coolest thing was the insane childcare gymnastics we had to pull off behind the scenes so that my wife could come and hang out with me in the green room before. This was her first book event of mine that she’s been able to attend. Sorry if that’s a corny, husband-y answer, but it’s true.”