Poll reveals Americans’ growing concern about the influence of sports gambling.

According to a Washington Post-University of Maryland survey, Americans are getting more concerned about the sports gambling industry’s expanding impact and are still cautious about how it will affect the games they watch. Nearly every group is affected by these detrimental trends, including the most passionate sports fans and bettors.

In general, 36 percent of Americans believe that the growing number of states that permit sports betting is “a bad thing” (up from 23 percent in 2022), while the percentage that believes it is “a good thing” decreased from 23 percent to 14 percent. The percentage of Americans who are neutral about good vs bad has decreased from 54% three years ago to about half (49%).

The Post-UMD poll’s results, which were conducted in the wake of gambling scandals in the NBA and MLB earlier this year, support similar shifts in opinion observed in other surveys conducted in the years since a 2018 Supreme Court decision paved the way for regulated sports betting. Currently, sports betting is legal in 39 states and the District of Columbia.

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Among respondents to the Post-UMD poll who bet on sports in the past five years, the share expressing negative views is smaller than within the overall group but growing sharply, with 20 percent saying the increasing availability of betting is “bad,” up from just 3 percent in 2022. Among frequent sports viewers, the share expressing that view has nearly tripled, from 12 percent to 34 percent. And among respondents ages 18 to 34 — the group most likely to bet regularly on sports — concern has nearly doubled, from 18 percent to 34 percent.

The SSRS Opinion Panel, an ongoing survey panel recruited by random sampling of U.S. households, conducted online and phone interviews with 1,032 American adults from December 4–7. The final sample has a sampling error margin of +/- 3.5 percentage points and was weighted according to political and demographic features of the U.S. population. The Post, the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism, and the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland carried out the survey.

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