Ahead of Missouri sports betting vote, KU professors worry about effect of widespread gambling

While Missourians decide whether to legalize sports betting in their state this November, professor Kevin Pisciotta and his colleagues at the University of Kansas recently published new research on the effects of sports betting on household finances.

When Pisciotta began his research, he knew gambling was a growing industry. He told KCUR’s Up To Date, however, “we did not necessarily expect how much we could identify in the data how hooked some people were.”

“[Initially] It was unclear whether most of the growth in sports betting was them expanding their reach among a larger set of the population, or a set of the population that continued to bet more and more. And it seems like it’s just as much the latter as the former.”

Pisciotta said that information on who bet the most, and where their money came from, was just as revealing.

“Almost all of our effects are concentrated in those that we would call ‘financially constrained,'” he explained. “The median person in that constrained group would have savings around $0 each year. And so they’re naturally running up against these savings constraints already, and they add this additional form of consumption.”

Missouri Amendment 2 would make it legal for people 21 years and older to bet on sports in Missouri, which would be regulated by the Missouri Gaming Commission. Sports gambling is already legal in Kansas.

Dr. Richard Yi researches the psychology behind addiction at the University of Kansas.

“We have these natural systems in our brain that signal when something happens, and it’s reinforcing,” Yi says. “So if I like it, it feels good, or takes something bad away.”

Yi says the risk of a gambling addiction can increase with online betting because of how it lowers traditional barriers of entry. If legalized in Missouri, he says gamblers won’t even need to leave their sofas to get a fix.

“It’s so readily available, the access is significantly increased relative to conventional casino betting,” Yi says.

• Dr. Richard Yi, professor of psychology at the University of Kansas and the Director of the Cofrin Logan Center for Addiction Research and Treatment
• Kevin Pisciotta, assistant professor of finance at the University of Kansas School of Business