‘I literally can’t stop.’ The descent of a modern sports fan

YUMA, Ariz. – Buddy Hield … who is this Buddy Hield?

Jordan Holt typed furiously on his computer in his Phoenix hotel room, searching for information on Indiana Pacers guard Buddy Hield. Holt, a 43-year-old meter and relay technician, was steaming mad, having just watched an NBA game between the Boston Celtics and the Pacers.

Hield had made a 3-pointer at the buzzer in a game that the Pacers had already secured, breaking an unwritten rule in late-game etiquette. But Holt wasn’t angry about Hield’s rubbing-in the score. He was angry because the three points pushed the final score to 122-112 … one point above the over/under line on his parlay bet.

Holt lost the $100 bet — but in his mind, he lost $700 in what should have been winnings.

“I started searching for his Instagram address,” Holt said. “I was going to scream at him. I wanted to go off on him.”

It was December 2023, and Holt was deep in the spirals of a rapidly growing problem: online sports betting addiction.

In the wake of a 2018 Supreme Court ruling, which enabled states to make sports gambling legal, the industry has exploded. In 2023, the industry brought in a record $10.92 billion, up 44.5 percent from 2022, according to the American Gaming Association.

Holt never thought he would be a part of the trend. In fact, he resisted it.

Back in 2021, shortly after Arizona became one of 30 states to legalize online sports wagering, Holt chuckled at a text message from his friend. For days, the friend was trying to lure Holt into joining FanDuel, an online sports wagering operation. The latest attempt included a link with a promotion: if Holt signed up, both of them would receive $50 for wagers.

Holt texted back.

I’m good bro lol. Why you keep trying to give a crackhead crack!?

Holt for the past 14 years had carried with him a stinging memory of gambling. As a 26-year old in 2007, he went into a Yuma casino after work thinking he would have a few drinks and play blackjack with buddies. He was feeling financially stable, having just paid off his credit card. He figured he wouldn’t gamble more than $200. By the end of the night, there were multiple wire transfers and more than $2,000 lost to the casino. Distraught at his lack of control and irresponsible decisions, he arrived at the home of his girlfriend in the early morning hours and wept.

Now the game had changed. After years of avoiding the casino, the sports book was coming to him. He could bet from his couch, his car, at his job, in his hotel room… all with the touch of a finger on his smartphone.

Researchers say this is a familiar playbook, one that mirrors the psychological approach used by slot-machine designers to create continuous play. Slots use certain colors and sounds to keep players engrossed. The sports-wagering apps use in-game betting, parlays and “free” bonuses.

“They have learned the psychology of slot machines,” said Dr. Michelle Malkin, an associate professor at East Carolina University who has studied online sports betting. “The same kind of people who may get lost in a slot machine will get lost in those same kind of apps.”

Holt resisted at first, knowing he was one of those people who could get lost.

When his friend responded to Holt’s request to back off — texting, Lol ok I will stop — Holt typed an ominous response.

Haha trust me man I want to set up an account I just know where that rabbit hole leads me.

For the next year, Holt was bombarded with enticements. Radio ads. Billboards. News media promotions. (The Athletic has a partnership with BetMGM). Even the NFL and NBA broadcasts he watched were touting how easy, fun and exciting it was to bet before — and during — the game. Once staunch opponents of wagering, professional sports leagues have now embraced the industry, unwilling to miss out on the new revenue streams.

On a whim in the fall of 2022, after a day of drinking beers in his backyard pool with friends, Holt entered the rabbit hole and joined FanDuel.

His bets started slowly, with light action on weekend football games. A $10 bet here, a $20 bet there. He won one, lost one, won another. The winnings — $20, maybe $40 — were not memorable.

It became a fun distraction, something he and his wife, Chantel, would sometimes do together. Late one night, with all the games over in the United States, Holt searched for action. He discovered how vast the options were to place bets. Table tennis … rugby … cricket. His interest was piqued by women’s basketball leagues in Japan and South Korea. Thinking that women’s games are not as high scoring as men’s games, he and Chantel placed a $50 bet on the under for that game’s total score and monitored the game online.

He won.

In his elation, he thought he had figured out “the hack” for sports betting. It was going to be easy money.

“And then,” Holt said, “I got myself into trouble.”

Holt, within weeks, had turned his $100 initial deposit into $600. He started dreaming big. He envisioned treating his teenage son, Sebastian, to an NFL game in Los Angeles. He started thinking about family vacations. Dance lessons for 11-year-old daughter Harper. House renovations.

His first goal was two tickets to the VIP section at the Chiefs-Chargers game for $700 each. Considering he had once won $1,000 over the course of a weekend, he figured he could win enough bets to pay for the trip before the Nov. 20 game.

There was a problem. The overseas women’s games were suddenly not cooperating. The once steady stream of wins was turning into a landslide of losses. As he beat himself up for not researching enough stats, he chased his money. If he lost $100 in the previous game, he would bet $200 the next game to win that money back. The more he lost, the more he chastised himself. In one day in November, he lost $1,000.

He was stepping into a trap that many problem gamblers face in sports betting: thinking their knowledge of sports protects them from losing.

“In my mind, it had nothing to do with me being unlucky,” Holt said. “It was me missing something when researching previous scores.”

Losing $1,000 somehow wasn’t as painful as the night in the casino decades ago, when he would physically withdraw money and hand it to dealers. These losses were all electronic, the funds siphoned from his bank account into the FanDuel account. Not only did Holt not have to drive to a casino, but also online betting allowed him to empty his bank account without having a tangible sense of the losses. The sheer convenience of it all was sublime for FanDuel’s business but vexing for Holt’s judgment.

“I looked at it like Monopoly money,” Holt said. “I didn’t see it as real money. I couldn’t physically touch it, I couldn’t hold it.”

He told Chantel about his $1,000 loss. Their solution was for her to open a FanDuel account so she could monitor and regulate his play. The loophole in that plan was Holt never closed his own account. He began double-dipping, betting with both accounts. The Chiefs-Chargers tickets he and Sebastian coveted were purchased.

“On her end of FanDuel, it looked like we had won money for the trip,” Holt said. “But on my end, we were going into debt.”

On Nov. 29, nine days after attending the Chiefs-Chargers game, Holt took out a $3,500 loan from United Services Automobile Association, a banking and insurance firm for military and veterans. He needed it to pay their mortgage. On Dec. 8, he took out a $5,000 loan from USAA to pay off the first loan and to have extra money for gambling.

“My only thought was, ‘I’m a shoo-in,’” he said. “This $5,000, I’ll do it differently this time. I know what to do, and I will discipline myself.”

He told himself that he would research statistics more deeply before betting on a game, and that he would stop after winning $100 in a day.

Thirteen days after his second loan, he took out a third, this time for $8,000.

His purpose for gambling had changed. Instead of trying to win money to attend games, go on vacations or build backyard sheds, he was playing to cover his growing secret.

“My goal and mission in life was to win that money back, so nobody would know,” Holt said. “And I wouldn’t have to tell the truth that I was a crappy person who just lost this money on stupid sports betting.”

Concealing his gambling habits, and conniving to cover his losses, became his new way of life.

Christmas in 2022 was designed to be memorable: A cabin rented in Prescott, Ariz. Plans to hike, shop and sightsee with the kids.

Memories were indeed made. Holt just wasn’t part of them.

On Christmas Day, he bet himself into another jam. Losses on the day’s football games mounted, spurning him to search for overseas basketball games to wager on after the family went to bed. Needing to win big, he bet big: $1,000 on an overseas game in which he didn’t know the names of the players or where the teams were from.

He didn’t sleep, resisting the urge to check the score of the game he bet on, for fear of jinxing the outcome.

Daybreak brought two sobering realities: He lost his bet … and his bank account was dry.

As his family talked about which breakfast spot to hit, Holt was detached. Chantel, who became attracted to him because of his looks and his life-of-the-party personality, had been seeing this version of Holt more and more recently. He was irritable, and often distant.

So when Holt said he was going to skip breakfast and the day’s activities so he could watch football, she wasn’t surprised. Little did she know, Holt wasn’t skipping out to watch a game. He was staying in the cabin trying to replenish their bank account. He searched for lending companies online. The mortgage was due in five days.

He went back to USAA. It was five days after his latest loan. This time, he took out $11,000 — paying off the $8,000 and getting an additional $3,000 to gamble.

In his mind, he had secured a victory. His FanDuel account was once again flush. Even though it was borrowed money, when he looked at his replenished balance, all the stress and angst from his previous losses dissipated, and were replaced with a newborn confidence.

“It was like … ‘I’m back!’ ” he said.

The couple joked that Chantel always picked corny, sappy films for their movie nights, and that Holt would have to sit through “another Chantel movie.” But this time, she thought she picked a winner. It had basketball, and Adam Sandler.

She put on “Uncut Gems,” in which Sandler plays a compulsive sports gambler.

About 30 minutes into the movie, as the two snuggled on the couch, Holt abruptly stood up. “He was like, ‘I can’t watch this … I can’t do this,’” Chantel said. “I was like, ‘What does that mean?’”

He was spiraling, and he knew it. Watching Sandler’s depiction of the betting experience— the stress, exhilaration and deflation — was too real, too close to home. For Chantel, it was another puzzling development in a relationship that was fraying.

“He often just wanted his own space,” Chantel said. “If anyone came out to the garage while he was watching a game, and you asked him a question, or made a loud noise it was instant … anger. So we would all stick to our own spaces.”

Chantel thought he might be having an affair. And he made so many trips to the bathroom — to place bets or check scores— that she wondered if her cooking was upsetting his plumbing.

“You can tell when Jordan is not Jordan,” Chantel said. “There were these little things where I could tell he was distracted, but I couldn’t tell what it was.”

Then, in March 2023, his world of gambling that he kept hidden from his family was pierced.

He bet $500 on a four-game NBA parlay. The first three games ended in his favor. All he needed was Phoenix to win at Golden State to cash in on several thousand dollars. After the first quarter, the Warriors led Phoenix 43-21.

“I thought, ‘Well, that’s the end of that,’” Holt said. “I went out to my garage, because when I feel that way, I don’t want to be around anyone.”

With Holt watching on a television in his garage, the Suns started a slow comeback, pulling within 75-58 at halftime. Late in the third quarter, Phoenix pulled to within three.

“I could feel my face getting hot,” Holt said. “My wife came out and asked what all the noise was about.”

He told her he had money on the game. But he didn’t tell her how much.

Phoenix never got closer than three and lost 123-112.

“I wept,” Holt said. “I didn’t bawl my eyes out, I just wept.”

His face in his hands, Holt heard a noise and looked up. It was Sebastian. Confused, his son asked what was wrong.

“I had to lie to him,” Holt said. “I made up some stupid story about how I just really wanted the Suns to win.”

His gambling addiction was in full bloom. Since Christmas, when he returned from Prescott, he had secured an additional three loans. His debt had reached $50,000.

He called his brother looking for answers. His brother told him he had to tell Chantel about the gambling.

Jordan’s gambling habits and conniving to cover his hefty losses nearly cost him his marriage to Chantel. (Ariana Drehsler for The Athletic)

Of Chantel’s favorite things in life, taking a hot bath ranks at the top. And on this May evening, she was well into her soak when Holt entered the bathroom and sat near her. He told her he was deep in debt.

“I started laughing, because he’s always joking, trying to keep me off guard,” Chantel said. “But then he said he was serious, and started to tell me he needed me to help sign contracts to take out money.”

She cried.

“I’m sitting there naked, when I’m most vulnerable, just thinking ‘What the F….?” she said. “I’m still pissed at him for telling me when I was in the tub.”

Since she had known him, he was always a provider. Always a fixer. They had been through trying financial times, and Holt always found a way to make it right. She likes to tell people she called him “Prince Charming” because he rescued her from a bad situation and had treated her like a princess. Now, she wondered how he was going to get them out of this predicament.

Holt had done the groundwork on taking out a home-equity loan for $70,000. It paid off three loans — in the amounts of $31,000, $10,000 and $15,000 — he had taken since January. They also paid off their credit card and bought furniture.

He started keeping a journal in his iPhone.

“What started out to be me trying to get extra money for a family vacation ended up costing me everything. It all starts just trying to get back where you were, and that’s where the snowball effect comes into play. Now I’m in debt $50,000 and losing my wife. Why does this happen? Why does temptation and greed take over one’s body and soul?”

He vowed to stop gambling and seek help. He contacted the Veterans Affairs, but they were no help.

“Unfortunately, people don’t look at gambling as the same problem as an alcoholic or someone hooked on meth, because you are not physically harming yourself,” Holt said. “So I would talk to a VA counselor and it was like, ‘Gambling? Well, stop.’”

He told Chantel he was done gambling. They were embarking on a new start.

When Holt got his first bill for the home-equity loan, he gulped. It was $650, and he couldn’t imagine making that payment every month.

His solution to getting money quickly was a familiar one: gambling.

“Instantly, my brain went to: ‘You can gamble and you can win the $650,” Holt said. “And if you win $650 a month, it would be like this home-equity loan never happened.”

The vow to stop gambling and the new start had lasted 16 days.

To support his habit, he needed funds. USAA, where he did his banking, would no longer give him loans, forcing him to take on high-interest loans from companies like NetCredit and LightStream. On June 8, NetCredit gave him a $4,000 loan.

He was wary of being caught by Chantel, so he saved his betting sprees for when he was on the road for work, which was often. After work, he would buy a six-pack of beer and settle in his hotel room for a night of betting and the emotional extremes ahead.

He had reached what he called his “groove of gambling,” in which he started betting big — $1,000 and $2,000 wagers. He was chasing lost money and looked at his losses not as what he bet, but what he should have won.

He was chasing more than a financial reward: he was seeking an emotional fix as well. He likened his big wins to sex. “When you win … it’s truly an orgasmic feeling,” Holt said. “It’s comparable to a sexual orgasm.”

His nights of winning would include treating himself to a steak dinner and cocktails, but most nights would end in frustration. More than once, he said he broke down in his hotel room.

“Hysterical crying,” Holt said.

He hated himself. Several times, he tried quitting and would go days without placing a bet. Then his phone would ping. It was his VIP representative from FanDuel with a text message.

Hey Jordan … I just gave you a $200 bonus bet into your account.

They had their claws in him, and he knew it. The ease of betting on his phone, and the come-hithers that FanDuel unleashed as his losses mounted, were an irresistible combination. It was mobile app vs. human willpower, and it was a total mismatch. But Holt’s competitive nature wouldn’t allow him to stop.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I couldn’t think about anything else. All I could think about was winning back my money.”

He doesn’t blame anybody but himself for his gambling, but he also harbors some resentment toward FanDuel.

“I can’t hold back my anger for them,” Holt said. “I think the way FanDuel exploits people like me — if somebody doesn’t gamble for a couple days, they all of the sudden get a deposit bonus, or, ‘Hey, you are part of the VIP Club!’ The way it’s being handled, it should be controlled more. It’s the Wild, Wild West.”

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He considered suicide, plotting ways to make his death look like an accident so Chantel could collect his life insurance. He settled on rolling his car off the highway at high speed.

“I know it sounds insane. It was insane,” Holt said. “But it’s also insane to bet $1,000 on a game when your paycheck is $2,000 every two weeks. I would bet half of that on games overseas, that involve players I’ve never heard of … don’t even know their names.

“It was that easy to throw down a bet,” he said, snapping his fingers.

By December 2023, Holt felt helpless. On Dec. 7, three days after Hield made his buzzer-beating 3-pointer to thwart Holt’s big bet, Holt wrote another journal entry.

“All aspects are great with the exception of gambling. I literally can’t stop. I’m so deep I don’t know what to do. I don’t want Chantel to leave me and I’m killing myself to keep her in the dark.”

The next month, with his money dwindling and knowing that no other lenders would consider him for a loan, Holt made what he calls his Hail Mary bet.

On Jan. 11, he made a 12-leg parlay — a string of 12 bets that combine to make one bet. Betting a parlay increases the potential payday, but lessens the odds at winning because so many things have to go right. His wager of $200 could win him $20,000. He made the bet while he was in Phoenix training for his new job as a meter and relay technician.

On his three-hour drive home to Yuma, he noticed 11 of his 12 bets had covered. The remaining bet was the over on the Boston-Milwaukee NBA game. He needed the teams to combine to score more than 242 points.

The Celtics at the time were the most dominant team in the NBA, and would go on to win the NBA title. But on this night, they were on the road playing their fifth game in seven nights, the night after an overtime victory in Boston. The Celtics played as if they were exhausted.

Boston missed 16 of its first 17 3-pointers and did not score for 6½ minutes in the second quarter. Jayson Tatum, the Celtics’ leading scorer, played only 16 minutes and scored seven points. It was the only time all season he did not score in double figures. The Celtics’ other star, Jaylen Brown, scored 10 points, at that time his lowest output of the season.

On a night when Holt needed the Celtics’ offense to be prolific, it fell flat.

The game ended as he arrived home: Milwaukee 135, Boston 102 … 237 total points. He lost.

“So I’m sitting in my driveway, thinking, ‘How am I going to tell my wife?’” he said. “That was the last of my money.”

When he went inside, Chantel said she could tell something was off. She was excited to see him after he had been gone a week. She wanted to have drinks and sit in the hot tub. She wanted to be intimate. Holt was too absorbed in his crushing loss to reciprocate her attention and desires.

“He came back from that trip and he was in his own head,” Chantel said.

The next morning, she found it odd that he awoke early and took his phone to the bathroom. When he was in the bathroom, he was transferring money from a savings account to make another bet. After he returned to bed, he eventually got up to make coffee and left his phone. She looked and found the FanDuel app.

He confessed. With the kids home, well within earshot, she told him they were done. She used words like “disgust” and “idiot” and “piece of s—.” She couldn’t believe she was having another moment like eight months ago. Since she sat in the tub and he told her he had lost $50,000, he had gone even deeper in debt. He had lost another $60,000.

“I was pretty harsh,” Chantel said. “At that point I was … I couldn’t stand him.”

It’s mid-August, and as Holt enters from the back patio, holding a plate of grilled steaks, he is unfazed by the hustle and bustle of his household. He sidesteps the family dog, a Weimaraner named Ludo, and does a passing glance at his kids, who squabble as they take a seat at the dining table.

Sebastian takes a swipe at Harper’s shoulder, eliciting a small squeal. Holt snaps. “Sebastian! Knock that off!” he says sternly, still holding the steaks.

“What? I didn’t do anything,” Sebastian pleads.

“I just saw you hit her …” Holt says incredulously.

Order is restored with one word from the far end of the kitchen.

“Kids …” Chantel says firmly.

It doesn’t escape Holt that with the kids, his voice doesn’t match Chantel’s impact, another reminder of his diminished authority since his gambling problem was exposed.

“I just don’t think my family sees me as the same,” Holt said. “And now my friends are starting to find out. They don’t see me as the same. They are all starting to see these secrets about me. All my skeletons are coming out.”

His annual activity statement from FanDuel for 2023 is a sobering snapshot of what being a sports fan can look like in this fledgling era of app-based betting: $878,529.56 wagered. $7,839 provided by FanDuel in enticements. Exactly 4,059 bets placed — an average of more than 11 a day — and $63,000 lost.

In the 15 months since he made his first bet, he had lost more than $110,000 — nearly all of his annual income of $120,000.

It was Jan. 12 when Chantel found his FanDuel account and confronted him, and Holt now calls Jan. 13 his “recovery birthday.” He started attending Gamblers Anonymous meetings, and now does three meetings a week.

A spokesperson for Gamblers Anonymous said that since 2020, men like Holt are increasingly common at their meetings. Before 2020, a person in their 40s attending a meeting would be the youngest in the room. Now, it’s the most common age range, a direct result of sports gambling. Experts say gambling problems develop over years, which is why Gamblers Anonymous is bracing for a surge from the scores of people who have started betting on sports in recent years.

“Today, we are opening meetings all over, specifically geared for males between 20 and 40, and the other day I was in a meeting with a 17-year-old,” a spokesperson said. “And the week before, somebody was in a meeting with a 14-year-old. We are tracing this all back to the legalization of all this, and the ability to gamble with your phone in your hand.”

As Holt attends his meetings, school has started in Yuma, which means summer came and went without a vacation. The Holts were scheduled to escape the Sonoran Desert’s scorching heat in early July, but Holt canceled the trip in June. The family knows the uncomfortable truth: They couldn’t afford vacation because of Holt’s gambling losses, which have also disrupted his marriage.

At one point, Holt said he printed divorce papers. Since January, the house had been filled with tension. But in a last-ditch effort, the couple decided to try to make it work, and both report progress. They have seen counselors. Chantel said she sees an improvement in Holt, as he is more present and less irritable. And she is pleased he has quit his fantasy football league.

Holt and Chantel are realistic, cautious to make any claims they are out of the woods.

“Unfortunately, my trust level, it’s very low,” Chantel said. “I don’t like lies. I’m a very easy-going person … and we are in this together. But respect me. I feel used. And I think that’s the worst.”

She says she now checks their bank statements weekly. She runs reports on him through Credit Karma to make sure he hasn’t taken out another loan. He imposed a self-ban on FanDuel, DraftKings and Arizona casinos, which lasts for five years. He has also installed the GamBan app on his phone, which prohibits him from accessing sports-betting related websites.

He is paying off the second home-equity loan by having $500 taken out of each bi-weekly paycheck. They are in debt, but they are not destitute.

Holt said it would be foolish to say he is 100 percent over his addiction, referencing the TV show, “Dexter,” in which the main character is a blood-splatter specialist by day and a serial killer by night. As Dexter leads the normal part of his daily life, he says he always carries a “dark passenger” that is his murderous alter ego.

“I feel like gambling is my dark passenger,” Holt said. “I feel like gambling is always there with me.”

(Photo illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Ariana Drehsler)