Every March, as the dregs of winter slowly melt into spring, the entire country unites around March Madness. The games are played in bars and living rooms all across the country. Fans rally around their alma maters and favorite teams, cheering them on while sweating in anticipation. Friends, classrooms, and offices fill out brackets, predicting who they think will come out on top and who will be eliminated by the very first round.
Since the NCAA held their first Division I men’s basketball game in 1939, a lot has changed. Basketball has exploded in popularity, becoming one of the three major sporting draws, among football and baseball. The tournament has expanded from including a meek eight teams to its current sixty-eight. Television coverage has also become a major part of its identity, generating millions of dollars in media revenue.
Another revenue-related change has come in the form of gambling. People have been gambling on sports for centuries. It’s a part of mankind’s nature – where there are athletes, there are onlookers willing to bet on them.
At first, the NCAA tried to distance themselves from the local bookies and circles of friends who would casually bet on games. Bracket pool betting over the championship became popular in the 1970s and 1980s, but it blew up in the early 2000s when the medium shifted online. Filling out brackets has now become a beloved tradition, something that people can spend hours obsessing over or fill out in under five minutes.
The brackets aren’t the problem, but the betting is. Last year, the American gambling Association estimated that roughly $3.1 million was legally bet on March Madness. That number doesn’t include other forms of betting, such as office pools, friendly bets, and other unregulated wagers. In total, the estimated amount of money gambled on March Madness games is likely as high as $20 billion.
Gambling has become intimately associated with the tournament, but it has also become associated with sports as a whole. The rise of online gambling has made the process much more accessible, especially to people looking to make small or casual bets. In 2025, the online sportsbook Fanduel made $7.8 billion in revenue, up 20% from the previous year. Sports betting has become a major contributor to the popularity of both professional and collegiate sports. A Pew Research poll found that 1 in 5 Americans bet on sports each year, a number that is growing at a substantial rate, likely in relation to online availability.
Unfortunately, the increase in gambling is not limited to sports. Prediction markets now allow users to bet on anything, from the length of Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech to whether or not Jesus will return in 2026.
Traders buy ‘yes’ or ‘no’ shares priced from a single cent up to a full dollar. The concept is presented as being silly – Why wouldn’t you want to bet on whether or not South Park will say the word ‘Tylenol’ in its newest episode? However, one of the largest prediction markets, Polymarket, saw $21.5 billion in cumulative trading value. Worldwide, roughly $44 billion was traded across prediction markets.
Gambling has never seen so much global popularity, largely due to the internet. Platforms like Fanduel and Polymarket utilize apps that allow users to make bets at the touch of a button, as often as they’d like, right from the comfort of their own living room or bedroom.
Up until the middle of the twentieth century, gambling was a taboo subject, not to be discussed in polite company or around dinner tables. Although its social censorship began to fade, it was still relegated to casinos and sports books. If people wanted to place a bet, they were required to physically leave their house and have human interactions. Online betting strips away those additional barriers. Without them, gambling has lost all of its perceived sinfulness, and is instead treated like a hobby rather than a vice.
Online betting is a major contributor to social decline. Between 2018 and 2024, searches regarding treatment for gambling addictions rose by 23%. Another survey estimated that about 20 million Americans reported experiencing “problematic gaming behavior … many times.”
Our society is addicted to instant gratification. Online betting is successful largely for the same reasons that Doordash and Netflix are. They provide the benefits of luxury without the effort of leaving the home. They provide quick dopamine hits that require no effort.
They’re also horrifically isolating. They remove the joy out of life, cutting human interaction down to a minimum and distancing people from reality. People unwittingly become trapped in a bubble of pre-made, pre-recorded, and pre-selected experiences.
Online betting has largely turned its users into addicts. A society of addicts is unhealthy. As Americans, we should be chasing virtue, not digital slot machines.
