Losing Big

America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling

By: Jonathan D. Cohen

Narrated by: George Newbern

Inside America’s preventable sports-gambling debacle

In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have done so. The result is the explosive growth of an industry dominated by companies like FanDuel and DraftKings. One out of every five American adults gambled on sports in 2023, amounting to $121 billion, more than they spent on movies and video games combined.

The rise of online sports gambling—the immediacy of betting with your phone, the ability of the companies to target users, the dynamic pricing and offers based on how good or bad of a gambler you are—has produced a public health crisis marked by addiction and far too many people, particularly young men, gambling more than they can afford to lose. Under intense lobbying from the gaming industry, states have created a system built around profit for sportsbooks, not the well-being of players.

In Losing Big, historian Jonathan D. Cohen lays out the astonishing emergence of online sports gambling, from sportsbook executives drafting legislation to an addicted gambler confessing their $300,000 losses. Sports gambling is here to stay, and the stakes could not be higher. Losing Big explains how this brewing crisis came to be, and how it can be addressed before new generations get hooked.

“Losing Big demonstrates how legalized sports betting became a gigantic business, a ceaselessly annoying marketing presence, and a genuine danger to hundreds of thousands of people.” —Daniel Okrent, author and inventor of Rotisserie League Baseball

A sad, but important commentary

The author provides an objective summary of the impact of legalizing sports betting, how we’re putting others at risk (especially young men), and how it is in need of additional regulation and reforms.

Harriwing

An incredibly frightening book when you get down to the nitty-gritty details. America has decided to legalize sports betting on mass without stopping to consider the negative consequences. I believe that one day we are going to look back at this the same way we look back at when doctors were prescribing opioids like they were skittles

Easy, short, informative

Sometimes funny, always insightful, and new perspective on something that feels like it came out of nowhere