Gambling Addiction Searches Rose After Sportsbooks Went Mobile

The headline needs a caveat

The headline is easy to misread, so start here: the study did not measure gambling-disorder diagnoses. It did not measure prevalence. It did not count unique people. It measured aggregate Google searches that looked like gambling-addiction help-seeking.

That caveat is not a footnote. It is the point. A 2025 JAMA Internal Medicine time-series study estimated that U.S. gambling-addiction help-seeking searches were 23% higher than expected after the Supreme Court's 2018 Murphy v. NCAA decision opened the door to state-authorized sports betting. That is a warning light, not a diagnosis counter.

What the JAMA study actually counted

The authors pulled monthly Google Trends data from January 1, 2016 through June 30, 2024. The searches had to mention gambling and one of several help-oriented terms: addiction, addict, anonymous, or hotline. The paper gives examples like searches for a gambling-addiction hotline or a person asking whether they might be addicted to gambling.

The outcome was not raw Google query volume. It was a normalized query fraction: matching searches per 10 million Google searches in a place and month. The authors then used a pre/post time-series model to estimate what search volume would have looked like without the policy and market changes, and compared observed searches with that expected baseline.

Nationally, the study estimated 23% more searches than expected across the post-Murphy period. It also estimated roughly 6.5 million to 7.3 million such searches during the 73 months after Murphy, with a peak of about 180,000 monthly searches in June 2023. Those are searches, not people. A worried bettor can search more than once. A partner, journalist, clinician, operator, student, or curious fan can search too.

“

The useful sentence is not 'addiction rose.' The useful sentence is 'private help-seeking searches rose.'

Legalization was the legal change; mobile was the access change

The legal trigger was Murphy v. NCAA. The Supreme Court did not create one national sportsbook system. It removed a federal barrier and left states to decide whether and how to authorize sports betting.

The access change came after that, state by state. The JAMA paper reports that operational sportsbook states grew from one in 2017 to 38 in 2024. Sports-wager dollars rose from $4.9 billion in 2017 to $121.1 billion in 2023, and 94% of 2023 sports-wager dollars were online.

More recent market data makes the same scale point. The American Gaming Association reported $166.94 billion in state-regulated sports-betting handle in 2025, while the U.S. Census Bureau reported sports-betting tax collections rising from $190 million in Q3 2021 to $917 million in Q2 2025. Handle and tax revenue are not health metrics. They show why the regulated sports-betting market is now large enough to warrant public-health attention.

Online launch had the clearer signal

The most important part of the JAMA paper is not only the national 23% figure. It is the attempt to separate retail sportsbook access from online sportsbook access in states where the timing allowed it. That analysis was possible only in New York and Pennsylvania, so it should not be stretched to every state.

In New York, the retail-only period before online sportsbooks opened corresponded with a small, statistically uncertain change in searches. After online sportsbooks opened, searches were 50% higher than expected for the remaining observation period. In Pennsylvania, retail sportsbooks corresponded with 33% more searches during the short retail-only window; after online launch, searches were 61% higher than expected and significantly higher than during the retail period.

That is why the mobile framing matters, with precision. The study did not isolate phone-app use from desktop online betting. But in ordinary life, online sportsbooks mean the sportsbook is no longer only a place. It is an account, a payment flow, a pushable product, and a screen that can be opened privately in the middle of a game.

Why searches matter anyway

Search is often where shame goes before it becomes a conversation. A person might not tell a partner, doctor, or friend that betting has started to feel out of control. They might type it into a search box at 1:17 a.m. They might look for a hotline before they can say the word out loud.

That is why search data can be useful in public health. It can reveal private concern before clinics, helplines, insurers, or regulators see a clean signal. But the method has real limits. Google's Trends documentation describes Trends data as sampled and normalized, not a scientific poll or a perfect mirror of total search activity. A Frontiers in Big Data review makes the same point for mental-health infodemiology: search data can track public concern, but interpretation depends on context.

A rise in searches can mean more harm. It can also mean more advertising, more news, more public awareness, more helpline promotion, more relatives searching for someone else, more repeated searches by the same person, or curiosity after a headline. The signal matters because it is sustained, timely, and private. It does not answer every question.

What the study cannot tell us

A search is not a diagnosis. The American Psychiatric Association describes gambling disorder as repeated or ongoing betting despite significant life problems, with diagnosis based on criteria over time. The National Council on Problem Gambling also frames problem gambling by harm and disruption, not by one search or one bet.

The JAMA authors list limitations that should stay attached to the finding. States that opened sportsbooks may differ from states that did not. COVID-19 disrupted sports seasons and search behavior. The queries were not necessarily submitted by people experiencing gambling problems. The state analysis covered eight qualifying states, not every legal market. The online-vs-retail comparison was only clean enough in New York and Pennsylvania.

Regulation is also not the villain in a simple story. Legal markets can create identity checks, tax receipts, self-exclusion programs, limits, disclosures, and enforcement channels that illegal markets do not. The harder question is whether public-health surveillance, treatment access, and practical friction kept pace when betting moved from a destination to a device.

If this is your private search

You do not need to diagnose yourself before asking for help. The useful threshold is simpler: if betting is causing secrecy, debt, failed attempts to stop, chasing losses, relationship strain, sleep loss, anxiety, or fear of what happens next, treat that as enough information to talk to someone.

• For gambling-specific support in the United States, NCPG currently directs people to call or text 1-800-MY-RESET or use online chat. NCPG says the helpline connects people with local resources across all 50 states and U.S. territories.
• If you feel unsafe, might hurt yourself, or need immediate crisis support, call or text 988 in the U.S. or contact local emergency services now.
• If the problem is access, set the boundary before the next game: sportsbook limits, self-exclusion where available, notification controls, and trusted-person accountability are all more useful before the app is open.

GuardianBlock can only belong in that stack as external friction. GuardianBlock Custom Blocks are built around user-declared no-go domains and guardian accountability on supported Windows browsers. They are not treatment, diagnosis, financial advice, a guarantee, or phone protection. The point is narrower: create space between the private search and the next private bet.