Harry Levant stood in a Philadelphia courtroom a decade ago, just as he had many times during a long career as a trial attorney. But this time, he wasn’t representing a client. He was before a judge pleading guilty to 13 counts of financial crimes, after using client money to finance his rampant gambling addiction.
“During that sentencing hearing, I made a vow,” he recalled. “In the presence of the clients who I betrayed, the court whose trust I had violated, and the presence of my own children with tears running down their faces, I made a promise: that if I could get well, I would do everything I could to try to prevent other people from suffering the same fate that I did.”
At an event last Tuesday titled “Sports Gambling as a Public Health Challenge,” Levant, now the director of gambling policy at Northeastern University School of Law’s Public Health Advocacy Institute, shared his tale of sports gambling addiction with a full classroom of Harvard Law students and made the case for stricter regulation.
Levant began his remarks with an explicit objective: “to get us thinking about the online gambling industry, particularly the online sports gambling industry, as an issue of public health.” According to Levant, online sports betting constitutes a public health threat because “it is an entirely new product that is fundamentally dangerous and, in fact, defectively designed.”
He added that, despite his personal experiences with betting addiction, he does not inherently object to legalized sports gambling. “I am in favor of the legalization of sports gambling,” he said. “I can’t do it, but I’m in favor of you being able to do it properly regulated.”
Levant, now an internationally certified gambling addiction counselor, noted that the American Psychiatric Association has classified gambling addiction alongside substance abuse disorders such as heroin and cocaine addiction since 2013. Despite the risk of gambling customers becoming addicted, however, existing policies allow online sportsbooks, such as DraftKings and FanDuel, to deploy advertising campaigns that he says are designed to distract customers from the risk of harm.
“What we’re looking at is the total normalization of a known addictive product,” he said. “Does it get any more normalized than when a 9-year-old child visits Fenway Park and sees MGM and DraftKings on the Green Monster?”
“What we’re looking at is the total normalization of a known addictive product. Does it get any more normalized than when a nine-year-old child visits Fenway Park and sees MGM and DraftKings on the Green Monster?”
Harry Levant
According to Levant, the lax regulatory framework came on the heels of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association. In that case, the Court ruled that the federal law banning states from legalizing sports betting violated the 10th Amendment, which prohibits the federal government from “commandeering” state legislatures, in other words, requiring them to pass or not pass legislation.
After Murphy, in the absence of industry-specific federal laws and regulations, states were at liberty to legalize sports betting. According to Levant, the vacuum Murphy created empowered the sports gambling establishment to shape the new industry without adequately safeguarding consumers from harm.
“Think of any other addictive product. With every other product, the government seeks to regulate the advertising, distribution, promotion, and consumption to keep the public safe,” said Levant. “With gambling, governments have become a financial partner. So, what we continue to see is the onus being placed on the individual. ‘Just bet responsibly, just be smart.’ So, if you have a problem, like me, you’re dumb as a bag of rocks.”
He argued the “responsible gaming” model that online sportsbook companies, state governments, professional sports leagues, and other key figures in the industry promote was intentionally designed to divert responsibility for the negative effects of online sports betting away from the industry.
“They say, ‘Very few people are ever hurt by our product, and for those unfortunate few, under the responsible gaming model, we will pay for their treatment,’” said Levant. “That’s the moral equivalent of Big Tobacco saying, ‘Let us do what we want with our product, as long as we pay for chemotherapy.’ Do we tolerate such a model with any other product?”
Levant stressed that the latest industry development known as “in-game betting” or “microbetting” poses an even greater risk of abuse and harm. Following a series of complex deals between major sports leagues and data companies, online sportsbooks now offer customers the opportunity to place wagers on individual plays — not just the outcomes of games.
Live, in-game online betting, said Levant, provides an endless repository of the drug that problem gamblers crave: betting action.
“DraftKings now owns, internally, the AI technology to make every single moment a betting opportunity,” said Levant. “Microbetting has made online sports gambling a fundamentally different, and more dangerous, product than ever could have been imagined.”
With microbetting now available during games in most professional leagues, Levant speculated its spread to collegiate athletics will create new tensions.
“Microbetting has made online sports gambling a fundamentally different, and more dangerous, product than ever could have been imagined.”
Harry Levant
“After decades of opposition, the NCAA announced in April they are now selling real-time data to the gambling industry,” said Levant, “which means there will be an 18-year-old who was at their prom in May, suddenly on an athletic field in September or October, with tens of millions of dollars being wagered on the next play of the game they participate in.”
At the end of his presentation, Levant expressed skepticism that members of the online sports betting establishment will proactively address deficiencies in its online sports betting platforms.
“When do you need regulation?” he asked. “When an industry shows that it has a complete inability or unwillingness to regulate itself.”
Levant then joined his colleagues from the Public Health Advocacy Institute, founder Richard Daynard and executive director Mark Gottlieb, on a panel moderated by Harvard Law Visiting Professor of Law Michael McCann LL.M. ’05.
During the discussion, McCann mentioned another new phenomenon in the sports gambling known as prediction markets.
“Prediction markets are not new, but they’re new in the sports world,” said McCann. “There’s a company called Kalshi that allows you to make a prediction on, for instance, who’s going to win an election or who’s going to win an Oscar.”
According to McCann, prediction market operators like Kalshi claim their systems do not constitute gambling because their product is technically an outcome-based contract that accounts for odds in the initial price, as opposed to the payout. In states where sports betting remains illegal, however, platform customers have increasingly begun to use prediction markets to “invest” in sporting event outcomes.
“States are now suing this company, arguing that this is just another version of sports betting […] Is this sort of an end around to sports betting?” asked McCann.
“The Kalshi business is huge, and it is absolutely a backdoor approach to all kinds of gambling,” said Gottlieb. “It’s particularly significant that they’re now taking sports bets or ‘investments’ outside of the state-licensed sports betting platforms where there is a revenue stream of public losses that goes to the states. That doesn’t exist here; the states don’t get anything.”
Gottlieb warned that without federal oversight, Kalshi and other prediction market platforms could soon subvert state control over sports betting and the value of existing licenses.
Jon Hanson, the Alan A. Stone Professor of Law at Harvard Law and director of the Systemic Justice Project, concluded the event. While he agreed that online sports betting is a recent phenomenon that poses serious problems, he also noted that the dynamics at play are hardly unique.
“The idea that what people are doing in their lives is determined by their own preferences, and not by a lot of situational patterns, is, I think, really illusory.”
Jon Hanson
“I think what’s missing is the way in which this is just an extremely common model. You can see this as an extreme illustration, […] an industry ‘unlike anything we’ve quite seen before,’” said Hanson. “The problem with that is, what happened with tobacco and what’s happening here is just our basic business model. The gambling industrial complex or gambling establishment is an illustration of industries across the board that have disproportionate influence over our government, over our regulatory systems, over our legal systems, over the very institutions in which you all will practice as lawyers or legislators.”
“We are living in a system that basically doesn’t ask fundamental questions about how it is that advertising is influencing, and corporate actors are shaping, the settings and situations in which we operate,” continued Hanson. “The idea that what people are doing in their lives is determined by their own preferences, and not by a lot of situational patterns, is, I think, really illusory.”
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