Digital betting platforms have exploded into the American zeitgeist over the past few years. These digital sportsbooks are often framed as whimsical apps designed for amusing little small-time bets, but the reality is that they’ve plunged tens of millions of people into gambling debt.
According to a bombshell analysis by Bloomberg, the least active two-thirds of sportsbook gamblers account for just 2.7 percent of estimated revenue — meaning that the remaining 33 percent of highly-active bettors account for the overwhelming bulk of the industry’s earnings.
That finding has some major implications for the gambling industry, which in 2025 was a more lucrative trade than film, video games, music, books, and museums combined.
Without the gamblers who see fit to pay into their various betting apps hundreds of times a year, Bloomberg observes, digital sportsbooks could lose around 60 percent of their revenue. The vast majority of gamblers, the analysis found, lost about 39 cents for every dollar they deposited into their apps. But for the top one percent of depositors lost nearly twice that rate, about 78 cents on the dollar.
Sportsbooks deny this reality profusely, framing their apps as entertainment products used by the majority of gamblers for brief — but fun — hits of excitement.
“As we have noted repeatedly, FanDuel is an entertainment product,” a FanDuel spokesperson told Bloomberg. “Every customer has a robust and easy-to-use suite of tools that support informed and controlled play — including deposit limits, timeouts and the ability to easily self-exclude with a few clicks.”
But the gulf between that statement and the findings in Bloomberg’s analysis is so wide that it’s downright insulting.
Of course, it’s well known that sportsbooks and other gambling companies exploit addicts and casual bettors alike — but these findings make it clear that the sportsbook market needs the former to make its windfall profits. Put another way, the industry has a crystal clear financial incentive to push as many Americans as possible into problem gambling territory, which probably explains why so many sports betting ads are flooding college campuses and the social media feeds of very young adults.
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