The Financial Consequences of Legalized Sports Gambling

Abstract

Following a 2018 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court, 39 states and the District of Columbia have legalized sports gambling. We study how this policy has impacted consumer financial health using the University of California Consumer Credit Panel, which contains credit report data for a representative sample of roughly 7 million U.S. consumers. Exploiting the staggered rollout of legal sports betting across states, we evaluate two treatment effects: the overall effect of any legal sports betting (General Access) and the incremental effect of introducing online or mobile betting in states that already offer retail betting (Retail-to-Online Access). We find that General Access is associated with a modest decline in average credit scores (0.7 points), while the introduction of online sports gambling leads to a substantially larger decline (about 12 points). These credit score declines are associated with increases in indicators of excessive debt, including bankruptcy filings, debt sent to collections, credit card delinquencies, and auto loan delinquencies. Together, our results indicate that the ease of access to sports gambling—particularly through online and mobile channels—harms consumer financial health by increasing levels of excessive debt.

Keywords: Gambling, Policy, Financial health, Sports