In January 2022, thousands of Louisiana State University faculty members, students and supporters received an unusual email from the athletic department. The subject line was: “Mobile Betting is Live! $300 in Free Bets Await.”

Undergraduates, many too young to gamble legally and some undoubtedly struggling with addictive behaviors, were invited to download a Caesars Sportsbook app and start betting on football and other sports.

This advertising and marketing aimed at luring young people into what is essentially the crack cocaine version of gambling may be a peek into the future of any state that legalizes online gaming, as some Texas lawmakers wish to do in 2025.

Emailing students wasn’t the only way LSU promoted gambling in its partnership with Caesars. Officials also invited the company to install signs throughout Tiger Stadium and on an upscale seating area planned for the stadium’s south end zone: the Caesars Sportsbook Skyline Club.

According to one local media account, “The deal included Caesars Sportsbook signs in the venues for LSU’s 20 other men’s and women’s varsity sports programs, including the basketball and baseball arenas. Caesars also received an exclusive spot on LSU’s mobile sports app and other broadcasting and digital sponsorship rights.”

After public outrage over the email, LSU apologized but kept its arrangement with Caesars. LSU cut ties with the company in 2023, only after the state Legislature banned such arrangements and the American Gaming Association recommended against partnering with universities.

This aggressive messaging to LSU students and others was part of an avalanche of local advertising urging sports fans to pick up a smartphone and start betting on games.

As an LSU faculty member at the time, I’ll be honest: My confidence in my university’s leadership was not high, but I never imagined that an institution with an obligation to protect students would encourage them to use a highly addictive product that, if used as intended, could lead them to financial ruin.

Let’s be clear: LSU pushed gambling on students because of the money the gambling industry promised it if it offered its students up as potentially lucrative, addicted customers.

And that’s one massive problem with online sports betting. This industry’s huge profits — and the tax revenue it generates for states — depend upon the irresponsibility and recklessness of those using the platforms.

The heads of gambling enterprises often profess that they want people to use their products responsibly. However, the ways that online gambling platforms are designed and the aggressive ways the companies push them on users suggest otherwise.

These companies are wealthy from their users’ obsessive, addictive behavior. In 2023, sports betting using online apps generated $11 billion in revenue, and the 30 states that have legalized this form of gambling reap hundreds of millions in tax revenue. It seems that everyone — lawmakers and users — is getting addicted to the promise of riches from online sports betting.

But these are not riches earned by selling or taxing a product designed to improve health or flourishing. The product sold and taxed is designed to achieve one primary objective: emptying users’ bank accounts. Companies do that by addicting customers to their online platforms.

The story of 43-year-old Jordan Holt of Yuma, Ariz., documented in a long, sad piece in The Athletic in October, is just one of dozens of stories newspapers and other media organizations around the country have shared concerning the financial and personal ruin involved in sports betting. Within 15 months of making his first bet, Holt lost more than $110,000, The Athletic reported. He contemplated suicide.

A 2023 NCAA college student survey found that sports betting is widespread at LSU and other college campuses. Twenty-seven percent of college students have placed bets using an online app. Problem gambling is a concern among this population. The NCAA survey found “16% having engaged in at least one risky behavior and 6% reporting that they have previously lost more than $500 on sports betting in a single day.”

College students and other young people aren’t the only ones at risk for gambling addiction in states that allow online sports betting, but they are among the most vulnerable and some of those most susceptible to the messages fed to them by the gaming companies.

If Texas joins the 30 states that allow online sports betting, it should do so only after citizens and lawmakers are fully aware of the dangerous and addictive behavior they are encouraging on college campuses and beyond.

Robert Mann is a former professor of mass communication at Louisiana State University.

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