The Dangers of Sports Gambling

Here in North Carolina, online sports gambling was recently legalized just in time for the NCAA March Madness tournaments. The American Gaming Association estimates that Americans wagered $2.72 billion on March Madness through these legalized sportsbooks. Despite gambling’s repudiated past, these companies now sponsor many sporting events and are partners with sports leagues, teams, and the TV networks on which they are broadcast. It is almost impossible to watch TV without seeing a commercial for one of these companies. With the growth and proliferation of legal sports gambling, Christians need to be aware that sports gambling inevitably breaks the two greatest commandments: to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and to love your neighbor as yourself. Although the Bible does not explicitly prohibit the activity of gambling, the Scriptures are far from silent on the topic.

Breaking the Greatest Commandment

The first danger of sports gambling is the most obvious: money. The Scriptures are consistent in their warnings against the “love of money.” Proverbs consistently warns against the danger of greed (Prov. 13:11; 15:27; 23:4; 28:22, 25), and Ecclesiastes affirms that money will never satisfy (Eccles. 5:10). Most famously, the apostle Paul warns that “those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs” (1 Tim. 6:9–10). Jesus puts this love of money as diametrically opposed to love for God: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Matt. 6:24).

This desire for wealth is the craving that sports gambling latches onto in order to draw people in. Sports gambling companies are businesses, and everything they do is aimed at making money. These companies will use all sorts of tactics to encourage people to bet more. In addition to the usual commercials and celebrity endorsements, most companies offer around $200 in “free bets” after you sign up and make your first bet over a certain dollar amount. They also consistently give better odds to encourage more betting as well as offering what are known as “parlays” where a bettor can take multiple bets and combine them into one bet to raise the odds and increase the payout. Even professional bettors understand that these parlays are a trap and not worth your time. Despite their messages to “bet responsibly” and the obligatory giving of gambling addiction hotlines at the end of their ads, these companies are predatory. They are seeking to arouse the addictive nature in people who seek wealth and winning. This love for money aroused by gambling directly contradicts love for God. But this is not the end of the consequences of this erroneous desire.

Breaking the Second Greatest Commandment

There is also a second and more surprising danger inherent in sports betting. After the inevitable loss of a bet comes disappointment. Depending on the nature of the bet, this disappointment is directed toward someone. When a person bets on sports, they are not merely betting on the outcome of the game. They are also betting on the athletes involved in the game. This turns the athletes into a mere commodity. Rather than seeing them as people made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26–27), sports gambling turns athletes into a means for a financial end. This only becomes heightened when one places what is known as a “prop bet”: a bet on an individual athlete to achieve certain stats.

Since the legalization of sports gambling athletes have noticed a change in fan interactions. In an article in The Athletic, David Aldridge catalogs a series of NBA players who have been verbally abused by fans who bet on them and did not win. Tyrese Haliburton, guard for the Indiana Pacers, observed, “To half the world, I’m just helping them make money on DraftKings or whatever…I’m a prop…” Unfortunately, this commodification is nothing new for athletes, whether being seen as points in fantasy sports leagues or from being told not to speak on political issues. When we see athletes as commodities rather than people, we distort what should be love for our neighbor into lust for our wealth and pleasure. Sports gambling speeds up this process and puts us on a path to destroy ourselves and our neighbor.

I believe the sports gambling industry is a predatory business predicated on the sin nature of all mankind and our lust for entertainment and wealth. As Christians, we must be aware of the dangers that sports gambling presents and remember our calling to obey the two greatest commandments: to love God and love neighbor.