As sports betting booms in North Carolina, so do gambling problems

By Michelle Crouch

Two years after North Carolina legalized mobile sports betting, counselors say they are seeing the fallout: drained bank accounts, strained relationships and young people — especially young men — spiraling into anxiety and depression after losing more than they can afford.

Calls to the state’s problem gambling hotline more than tripled between 2021 and 2025 as North Carolina rolled out legal sports betting, state data show. And the average age of callers dropped from 43 to 38 as younger gamblers sought help.

Gamblers Anonymous meetings across the state are reporting near-record attendance, said Gary Gray, director of the North Carolina Council on Problem Gambling.

Jonathan Hetterly, a licensed mental health counselor in Charlotte, said he is seeing more young men struggle with gambling problems. Some are already deep in debt by the time they come to him.

“It can spiral quickly,” he said. “I’ve had some that have lost thousands of dollars in an hour.”  

Allan Howe, another Charlotte therapist, said his clients aren’t just losing money. They’re borrowing from friends, moving back in with their parents and lying to their romantic partners.

“It has just created a monster when it comes to how it is affecting these guys,” he said. “The financial hit. The self-esteem hit. The relationship hit. It can get to the point of self-harm when they are so down and don’t feel like there is a way to get out.”

North Carolina legalized mobile sports betting in March 2024, joining dozens of other states that allow wagers through online sportsbooks like DraftKings and FanDuel. At the time, lawmakers said they were losing tax revenue to other states that had legalized gambling. 

Now, instead of driving to a casino or across state lines, people can bet instantly from their phones, sometimes dozens of times during a single game.

Since the first betting apps went live in March 2024, bettors across North Carolina have wagered more than $13.5 billion, according to state data, far exceeding the state’s projections. The state’s 18 percent tax on operator profits has already generated more than $262 million to support college athletics, prevention programs and the state general fund.

Typical gamblers getting younger

Counselors and addiction experts said sports betting problems are hitting young men hardest. Many are in their 20s and 30s, but teens as young as 15 and 16 are seeking help, Howe said.

Nationally, more than a third of boys aged 11-17 (36 percent) said they engaged in gambling activities over the past year, according to a study published in January by Common Sense Media.

Gray, who has answered calls for Gamblers Anonymous in North Carolina for more than 20 years, said he remembers only one call involving a teenager before the state legalized sports betting.

Now, he said, many of the calls involve college and high school students.

Gray recently heard from a mother whose son, a college sophomore, had wiped out his savings placing sports bets on his phone and was asking for help.

“She didn’t know whether to help him pay off his debts,” Gray said. “I told her, don’t do that. If you bail them out, six months later they’re right back in deeper.”

Legally, bettors must be 21 to gamble in North Carolina, but counselors said teens are finding ways around those restrictions.

An unexpected text message

One Charlotte mother, who asked not to be named to protect her son’s privacy, told The Ledger/NC Health News she learned her 21-year-old son had a gambling problem when she got a text out of the blue from another student at his college.

The student said her son owed him a few hundred dollars.

“I know he’s a good kid,” the student wrote in the message last fall. “I’m not saying this to get him into trouble. I’m saying this because I’m worried about him.”

The student added that he had another friend who lost over $25,000 betting on sports and had to enter rehab, and he didn’t want the same thing to happen to her son.

The next day, the mom and her husband drove to see their son, who admitted he had a problem with sports betting. They helped connect him with a therapist, and he is now working to recover.

The mom said she’s grateful someone spoke up before the problem got worse, but she worries about the young people who don’t have someone looking out for them.

“It’s so unfair because the odds are really stacked against these kids,” she said. “My child is very smart and very self-aware in a lot of ways, and he still got sucked in.”

Young brains more vulnerable

The trend also worries state mental health officials.  

“We’ve seen an incredible surge in the amount of social pressure that adults and teens, especially young males, are facing,” said Kelly Crosbie, director of the state health department’s Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Use Services.

These days, it’s nearly impossible to watch a sporting event without seeing analysts and celebrities discussing the odds and which wagers to place.  Sports betting platforms have flooded TV and social media with ads featuring celebrity influencers, sign-up bonuses and “free money” for bets.

A 2022 study by British researchers found that such marketing is highly effective, with nearly a third of sports bettors saying it prompted them to place bets they hadn’t planned. Similarly, a 2023 NCAA survey found that 58 percent of college students who had seen sports betting ads said the ads made them more likely to place a bet.

“Marketing to young people is particularly insidious,” Crosbie said, “because young people’s brains are still developing.”

The prefrontal cortex, which governs impulse control and decision-making, is not fully developed in young people until their mid-20s, research shows, which means they’re more prone to risky behaviors like gambling. 

Gambling addiction linked to suicide

Studies show that people with gambling problems have higher rates of depression, anxiety and substance use disorders and are significantly more likely to report suicidal thoughts or attempts. One 2023 meta-analysis found nearly a third of people with gambling disorders reported suicidal ideation.

Unlike alcohol or drug addiction, you can’t see or smell a gambling problem, Gray said, so people can rack up debt in secret for years. They can have 15 credit cards a spouse doesn’t know about, two or three mortgages on the house or maybe they’ve raided their retirement savings. By the time the problem surfaces, the financial and emotional damage can be hard to repair.

“When you get so deep in debt, your life’s falling apart, you can’t make your house payment and you lose your family, it throws you into a really dark place,” Gray said. 

A dopamine cycle

Like other types of addictions, gambling hijacks the brain’s dopamine reward system, Howe said.  “When someone wins a bet, they get that dopamine hit,” he explained. “Your brain likes that feeling and wants more of it.”

Over time, many gamblers find they need to bet more to get that same rush.  When they lose, they often feel anxious or frustrated — which can push them to keep betting in hopes of getting that rush again.

“People get caught in this loop of chasing the next hit,” Howe said.

Betting apps can make it harder to break that cycle, experts said, by using the same types of notifications, alerts and promotions that keep people scrolling on social media — all on a device that never leaves your side.

“When the dopamine rush is tied to a tap on their phone, it can be a struggle not to act on it,” Hetterly said.

Treatment, prevention and education

Of the $180 million per year North Carolina has collected from a tax on sports betting operators, $2 million is set aside for gambling addiction, education, prevention and treatment programs.

Crosbie said some of that funding is used to ensure that help is available to all North Carolinians with gambling problems, including those without health insurance.

People who call the state’s gambling hotline (1-877-718-5543) can be connected to a local counselor or set up for virtual therapy through Birches Health, a New Jersey-based provider that specializes in gambling problems. (The hotline also serves those affected by someone with a gambling problem, like a spouse or parent.)

At the same time, the state is focused on prevention, Crosbie said. Last year, it partnered with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and Freedom House of Mecklenburg, a nonprofit that provides gambling prevention services, to pilot a program for middle school students.

The 10,000 seventh-graders who took part in the program reported a better understanding of gambling risks and reduced some gambling behaviors, according to results outlined in a report to the state.

For college students, the state-supported Gambling Research and Policy Initiative at East Carolina University has created a specialized curriculum that was recently licensed. 

The state hopes to bring both programs to more schools and colleges in the coming years.  

“Sports betting is part of young people’s lives now, so education about the risks should be part of school curriculum,” Crosbie said. “The industry is moving very quickly. We’re trying to make sure people understand the risks before the problems start.”

This article is part of a partnership between The Charlotte Ledger and North Carolina Health News to produce original health care reporting. You can support this effort with a tax-deductible donation.

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