WASHINGTON — A Senate committee discussed the potential for federal regulation of sports gambling during a nearly two-hour hearing last week that focused on how the industry’s widespread legalization across the United States was affecting athletes, the general public and the integrity of amateur and professional sports.
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said sports betting had become a public health issue since a Supreme Court decision in 2018 overturned a federal law that had effectively banned the practice outside Nevada. Sports betting is now legal in 38 states and the District of Columbia, with Missouri set to become the 39th state in 2025. This was the first Senate hearing focused on the possibility of national regulations for the multibillion dollar sports-betting industry.
“I think there is a feeling on both sides of the table that we need to address this,” Durbin said.
That these issues were being debated by one of the most powerful Senate committees, albeit during a lame-duck session, speaks to the rapid rise of the sports-betting industry in the United States. Its exponential growth over the past six years has surprised even people in the gambling industry, and public officials are grappling with how to catch up.
Americans legally wagered more than $30 billion on sports in the last quarter, according to the American Gaming Association, the industry’s trade organization. The National Council on Problem Gambling also estimates that 2.5 million adults each year may have a severe gambling problem, and that 5 million to 8 million additional people have mild or moderate gambling problems. There has been little consensus, though, on who bears responsibility for bettors who develop problems.
The committee invited a slate of witnesses who were approved by both the majority and minority members. Charlie Baker, the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, told the committee that there had been an increase in reports of integrity concerns and betting-related harassment of college athletes and coaches as legalized sports betting had spread across the country.
“I appreciated the fact that Democrats and Republicans both talked about the fact that there probably could be an important role to set a baseline here for prop betting, and sports betting generally, nationally,” Baker said after the hearing. “That has some real value.”
Under Baker’s leadership, the NCAA has successfully lobbied multiple states to ban prop bets — wagers that do not directly relate to the outcome of a game and are usually tied to an individual athlete’s performance — on college sports. Harry Levant, who serves as the director of gambling policy with the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University and is in recovery from gambling addiction, told the committee about other practices he saw as particular concerns, including in-game betting, deceptive marketing and the use of VIP hosts, whom operators assign to frequent gamblers to extend personalized offers and incentives to keep them betting.
David Rebuck, a former regulator in New Jersey and a current consultant to the gaming association, told the committee that federal oversight was “clearly not needed.” He argued that states and tribal jurisdictions were best equipped to address the issues raised at the hearing and pointed to initiatives that had been carried out at a state level, such as self-exclusion lists and partnerships with addiction treatment providers.
Several pieces of federal legislation related to sports betting have failed to gain traction in recent years. In September, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., introduced the SAFE Bet Act, which would include limits on advertising, affordability checks and restrictions on the use of artificial intelligence to create bets and target bettors.
The gaming association has condemned the bill. Bill Miller, president of the AGA, said last week during a meeting of the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States that he expected the industry would be under less scrutiny from the federal government in the coming years.
“We have a Republican president, Republican Senate and Republican House,” he said. “And so what does that mean for the gaming industry? It means probably less pressure.”
Despite industry opposition, Durbin said after the Dec. 17 hearing that he saw “openings and opportunities” for federal regulations. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he would be “very open” to an independent commission tasked with putting together guardrails that states would have to operate within.
“Maybe we need to start thinking about rules of the road,” Tillis said. If not, he added, “it’s going to get worse.”
