Imagine you’re watching the Buffalo Bills play the Kansas City Chiefs. You have $10,000 on the Chiefs winning. They are in the lead, but they throw the ball just short, and get intercepted, and lose the game. Now you’ve lost $10,000. It’s like studying all year just to have one bad test tank your grade. This just shows how unpredictable gambling can be. 

The reason betting can be so unpredictable is because of the possibility of flukes. But the million-dollar question is, how do you know when to stop gambling? When you make your money back, or you’re up 100$?

Very few people know when to stop, and that’s what makes gambling so addictive. The more people bet, the more they start to think they can “beat the system,” but when you put in all of that work and still lose, you can imagine how someone might look for an excuse for losing. Doing this can lead to people thinking gambling sites are “rigged.”

The pressure of sports betting hasn’t just hit the fans; it also has reached the locker room. This creates massive athlete scandals and a prime example of this is banned NBA (National Basketball Association) player Jontay Porter. 

According to the Seattle Times, Porter was banned for life by the NBA in 2024 for violating their gambling policies while playing for the Toronto Raptors. He was involved in betting on his own games. 

It’s almost impossible to watch a sports game today without seeing sportsbook ads promising “risk-free bets” or instant payouts. According to Fox Sports, sports betting is legal in 40 states, these ads have been normalizing gambling to the point where it feels like, for some people, a mandatory part of being a fan.

Ankeny High School (AHS) senior Carter Lee said, “Every single commercial break is just forcing ads down your throat.” 

But it’s not just fans who are feeling pressure; it’s the athletes, too. 

Ankeny High School (AHS) senior Parker Davis stated, “I feel like sports betting can ruin sports. I feel like it makes it so athletes aren’t trying as hard but trying hard to like achieve stats like if someone bets on 2 throwing touchdowns and 1 rushing touchdown from Mahomes, it could be 14-14 with 15 seconds left on the clock down at the 5 yard line instead of keeping it simple and getting an easy passing play, Mahomes would most likely run it and potentially lose the game just to fulfill the bet.” 

Many people who gamble love the adrenaline rush that comes with it, but have you ever thought about what it would mean to the player if they knew they were being bet on?

 “I’d honestly think it’d be pretty cool to be important enough to be bet on. I think it could help motivate me knowing that someone’s relying on me, but that could also tear me down if I lost a race.” Said AHS junior Caleb Crouse.

This constant exposure to gambling impacts the community in many ways, the first being for little kids. Some little kids love to watch sports with their family. Sports gambling ads like DraftKings Sportsbooks may influence kids to think that it’s normal or “cool” to bet on sports. This can lead to major addictions for kids that could end up destroying their relationships with people if the addictions get bad enough.

Sports like the National Football League (NFL) are well known in the U.S., and according to ESPN, each NFL game averages 18.7 million viewers. While that is a lot of people and potentially lots of money generated from gambling, Soccer sports betting generates an insane amount of money. According to Stacker, Soccer sports betting generates over $800 billion in total wagers annually.

So whether you think it’s right or wrong to gamble, it can significantly impact people’s lives. For some people, sports gambling is just an easy way to boost adrenaline when watching a game, but for others, it can be financially catastrophic and ruin relationships. 

As long as the ads keep rolling and the bets keep coming, we have to ask ourselves, are we still really watching for the love of the game, or are we just waiting for the next payout?