Over the last eight years, the world of sports betting has seen a drastic resurgence after the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992, a leftover statute from the Prohibition Era that criminalized the business of alcohol and gambling, was struck down in 2018. Sports betting has amassed millions of users through aggressive campaigning and taking advantage of lax legislative enforcements.
Through parlays, a combination of two or more bets on a player’s performance, online sports betting companies, such as DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM — three of the most popular online sports gambling sites — offer a new incentive to watch the game. Now anyone can buy-in on the action. Today, the business of sports betting has become a competitive force in the stock market and has drastically changed the world of sports for fans and players alike.
Although sports betting is still illegal under CA Penal Code Section 337a, with participants being subject to imprisonment and/or a fine of up to $5,000, the trend has increased in America; according to a 2025 study published by Quantumrun Foresight, an AI-powered research platform tool that compiles market data and trends.
The American Gaming Association, a national trade organization that represents the commercial gambling industry, reported that the American sports betting industry has been on a steady incline since 2019. They recently reported that Americans legally wagered $166.94 billion on sports last year, an 11% increase since 2024.
For 19-year-old Jyle Mims, the perceived sense of control — being able to bet on individual players and their performance rather than a randomized lottery ticket — is the main appeal. However, Mims said that, compared to previous eras, the popularization of sports betting on social media has diminished the integrity and nostalgia of the sports world.
“Because it wasn’t really sports betting back in the day, people played for the heart of the game. People played because they wanted to play.” Mims said. “Now, people are playing for the money and the contracts.”
According to a Pew Research poll from October 2025, Americans perceive sports betting as having increasingly negative impacts on society and the sports world. In 2025, 43% of surveyed adults agreed that sports betting is bad for society — a 26% increase since 2022.
Popular Influence
Jermaine Golz, a business marketing graduate from San Diego State University, noted how the bright colors, catchy slogans and endorsements from big-name content creators — like internet personality Druski are used to draw in a younger audience.
According to Golz, young male sports fanatics, who may be feeling financially uncertain, are enticed by the get rich quick scheme touted by sports gambling corporations.
2022 saw the most expensive ballot campaigns in U.S. history, with an estimated $450 million being spent. California voters rejected two bills to legalize sports betting: Proposition 26, a bill legalizing sports betting in tribal casinos, and Proposition 27, a bill legalizing online and mobile sports betting.
With a rise in popularity of sports gambling through social media, it’s not just celebrities and popular streamers, such as Drake or Adin Ross, endorsing sports gambling but the players themselves. Sports gambling has become big business for professional athletes, but it has also welcomed sports betting-related scandals.
In 2024, Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter received a lifetime ban from the National Basketball Association (NBA) after he was caught manipulating his game performance and conspiring with sports gamblers. During his 2023-2024 season with the Raptors, Porter was reported to have earned up to $22,000 over a span of 13 NBA game bets he didn’t play in.
Although most professional sports leagues have strict rules against sports betting for athletes, the rules around partnerships and sponsorships for online sports gambling are blurred. Athletes themselves are being drawn in by the money to promote online sports gambling to their fans. For instance, Los Angeles Lakers forward Lebron James currently has an ambassadorship with DraftKings.
Toxic Online Culture
16-year-old Jonathon Vargas was familiarized with sports betting through friends and family, and has heard of instances where people will lose up to $1,000 on a parlay; He says he’s seen it become an addiction.
Vargas emphasized how “evil” and “greedy” the sports betting culture can be due to the competitive and mercenary mentality that it encourages, as well as how this culture generates fan-on-player harassment, which is normalized through jokes on social media.
“That is a big key factor, that sports betting can also cause harassment to players — some people receive death threats off of it,” said Vargas.
Cases of fan-on-player harassment is something New England Patriots defensive tackle Eric Gregory has seen inflicted on other professional athletes on social media.
“It’s a lot of stuff going [on] out there, with a lot of fans approaching athletes, and I just want [them] to take into consideration that we’re all human too,” Gregory said. “We all have emotions, we all have feelings… just try to approach everybody, with the same: how you would want somebody to approach you.”
According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, one-third of Division 1 men’s basketball student athletes have reported receiving sports gambling related harassment online. In 2023, Cameron Corhen, a Division 1 college athlete, received harassment online after not performing well due to an injury. He told NPR that he received “some crazy messages” after presumably messing up someone’s parlay. One message stated, “I hope your mom dies.”
Alijah Gourdine, an international business major at Howard University, said that sports betting culture, combined with the anonymity and lack of repercussions on social media, gives some bettors a false sense of power and is what ultimately leads to cases of athletes receiving harassment from fans.
The primary cause for the abuse online athletes face, according to Gourdine, comes from the irrational expectation for athletes to perform the same every game.
“I think that people get upset if a player has done something consistently and then the one night they decide to put money down on that player, they don’t do that. But in reality, that’s just how sports go,” said Gourdine.
