Losing More Than Bets

The profound mental poison of sports betting is even sadder than you think

“Football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.”

— Orwell, 1984

One spring night at University I was driving home from the gym with a sweaty smile. As I opened the house door and saw the roommates in the living room, a couple of them yelled they had one hundred eighty dollars on the game playing. I started dying laughing out of confusion — these were two guys who never gamble. They told me they were using free play from sports betting companies, available thanks to Massachusetts’ new 2023 online gambling laws.

“Hah, that’s how they get ya hooked!” I said as I headed to the shower.

The next night I was stuck to the TV watching an NBA game I bet one hundred fifty dollars of “free play” on. As I reflected on my new addiction the benevolent FanDuel corporation helped gift, I realized there are two types of sports gamblers. The first, rare, is someone who believes it is going to make them wealthy. They heard Dave Portnoy made a bag on Michigan after all! There is no hope for this person. He does not even know he is a sucker; he thinks he is “due.” The second, more common, is someone who does it for the thrill. This person knows there are better ways to allocate finances and dopamine, but views it as harmless entertainment. So what if you play around with a couple hundred in your account? What is the big deal? The obvious danger is that you could slip into a deep, serious addiction. But even assuming that doesn’t happen, it is still a big deal; the big deal is the opportunity cost.

Consider an average NFL game you watch, as if anxiously paying attention makes any difference for your wager, which lasts about 10,800 seconds. On top of that let’s say you spend one hour each week—3,600 seconds—evaluating and selecting bets. And, say, half an hour—1,800 seconds—throughout the week randomly thinking about these bets: the inevitable attention residue. That’s a total of 5,400 seconds per week used on these activities. Now, if you live to be 90 years old, you’ll have lived for approximately 2,838,240,000 seconds. If you gamble at the rate above, tens of millions of seconds of those two billion are spent on sports betting. Percentage-wise, it is not much. But to me, using tens of millions of seconds of attention in that way is a Shakespearean level tragedy, albeit a much less romantic one. Of course the terrifying reality is that there is no guarantee you will live to 90 years old. Further, even “casual” gamblers spend much more time cooking up bets and watching games than in our example.

You can dismiss this opportunity cost. “It ain’t that deep.” you might say. No. That is wrong. It is that deep. Also, sorry, but you are literally making yourself dumber. How much more fulfilled would you feel if you didn’t invest your time and emotions into this crap? Imagine if you were more focused on pursuits that gave you deep meaning, rather than the hollow rush of boasting you had fifty dollars on Nuggets -7? Imagine if instead of studying stats and records, you studied the great philosophers and scientists? Imagine if instead of getting attached to pro athletes, you became attached to making yourself a better athlete? What would your life look like without these distractions? How much more proud of yourself you would become?

Maybe you’re nice with the bets. You have a solid P/L on DraftKings. You love sports. That’s cool. I get it. Do you. I still find it depressing that otherwise smart and ambitious guys use even a little bit of their sacred attention in such a cheap way. Cramming their minds with useless information that is designed to distract. Flushing away moments of this miracle of existence—this precious, bizarre, beautiful life. Whining and complaining over a made up game they have no control over played by strangers on a screen. They know more about the running backs with great vision than they do of their own vision for their future. They scream at a game with all their heart and soul without putting any heart and soul into their own pursuits and creations.

You have the choice! Captivity in the sports betting den, where you can comfortably limit your cognitive capacity and screw with your emotions in the name of “fun.” Or you can wake up. You can develop discipline. You can renounce the damn manipulative profanity, and embrace the liberating adventure of instead betting on yourself.