Debt complaints stay flat after a state legalizes sports betting
One to three years after a state opens online sports betting, debt collection complaints to the CFPB change by -2% (95% range -10% to +7%), across 25 states against 19 that never did. Credit files tell another story: studies of them find bankruptcies and missed payments rising.
No change in complaints.
For each state that opened online sports betting from 2018 to 2023, debt collection complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after the launch are set against the two years before it, and against the same months in the 19 states where online betting stayed closed. One to three years after launch, complaints moved -2% (95% range -10% to +7%). In the first year, -8% (-15% to -0.3%). The same test run on the two years before any launch gives -4% (-14% to +6%), which is the size of the noise.
| State | Online betting opened | First year | Years two and three |
|---|---|---|---|
| NJ | Aug 2018 | -3% | +7% |
| PA | May 2019 | +7% | +57% |
| IA | Aug 2019 | -9% | +3% |
| WV | Aug 2019 | -9% | -16% |
| RI | Sep 2019 | +4% | +48% |
| IN | Oct 2019 | -18% | -2% |
| OR | Oct 2019 | -9% | -18% |
| NH | Dec 2019 | -26% | -28% |
| CO | May 2020 | -1% | -5% |
| DC | May 2020 | -31% | -18% |
| IL | Jun 2020 | +1% | +28% |
| TN | Nov 2020 | +31% | +26% |
| VA | Jan 2021 | +26% | +12% |
| MI | Jan 2021 | +4% | +14% |
| AZ | Sep 2021 | -2% | -1% |
| WY | Sep 2021 | -14% | -41% |
| CT | Oct 2021 | -3% | -1% |
| NY | Jan 2022 | -25% | -12% |
| LA | Jan 2022 | -23% | -1% |
| AR | Mar 2022 | -11% | -7% |
| KS | Sep 2022 | +23% | -1% |
| MD | Nov 2022 | -14% | +3% |
| OH | Jan 2023 | -15% | -10% |
| MA | Mar 2023 | -44% | -25% |
| KY | Sep 2023 | +2% | -6% |
Credit files say otherwise.
Studies that read credit reports find people falling behind after online betting opens.
- Hollenbeck, Larsen and Proserpio, The Financial Consequences of Legalized Sports Gambling (Oct 2024 version) (also on SSRN). University of California Consumer Credit Panel, about 7 million consumers. Where online betting opened, the chance of bankruptcy rose by as much as 25% to 30% three to four years in, and debt in collections by about 8%. Abstract, sections 4.1 and 4.2, the conclusion and the launch dates table read in full; the rest skimmed. Read from the copy the Minnesota Senate hosts; the Feb 2026 revision on SSRN could not be read.
- Goss and Mangrum, Sports Betting Across Borders, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Report 1184 (revised Oct 2026). New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel (Equifax, 5% sample) and transaction data. The share of adults 90 days or more behind on any debt other than student loans rose 0.36 points; for people under 40, 0.74 points. Abstract, introduction and Table A1 read in full; the rest skimmed.
- Baker, Balthrop, Johnson, Kotter and Pisciotta, Gambling Away Stability, NBER working paper 33108. Household transaction data. Betting cut savings; among households short of money, credit card debt and overdrafts rose. Abstract only.
Complaints are a different thing. A complaint is filed by the few people who know the Bureau exists and choose to write to it, and lately by services that file in bulk: US debt collection complaints went from 59,438 in 2022 to 283,194 in 2025, in every state, betting or not. New York's share of them went from 4.7% in 2022 to 3.9% in 2025 while its betting grew.
That is what $BROKE counts: complaints, not distress. It is a number about who writes to the Bureau, and it cannot show what betting does to anyone's finances.
Method and caveats
- Per state, the change in mean log debt collection complaints after online sports betting opened, minus the same change in the 19 control states over the same months. did_0_11: months 0 to 11 after launch; did_12_35: months 12 to 35; both against months -24 to -1. placebo: months -12 to -1 against -24 to -13. Each state's change is averaged across the 25 states, with a 95% range from the spread between states.
- Debt collection complaints by calendar year, read Nov 12 2026 with one call per year (date_received_min Jan 1, date_received_max Dec 31; the API's end date is inclusive), all states and New York.
- Controls: AL, AK, CA, GA, HI, ID, MN, MS, MT, NE, NM, ND, OK, SC, SD, TX, UT, WA, WI. Left out: Nevada (in-person sign-up), Florida (opened, closed in 2021, reopened in 2023), Missouri (Dec 2025, too late to measure).
- Two-way fixed effects (state and month), errors clustered by state, 6,958 state months. Computed in Python. It gives -6% (-18% to +9%).
- Three things bias this toward finding nothing: the surge in bulk complaints is largest in Texas, Florida and Georgia, which are controls; bettors cross state lines, so control states are partly exposed; and a complaint is not a missed payment.
- A null result is the finding here. It says the complaint file cannot see this, not that betting is harmless.
Sources
- CFPB consumer complaint database API, product Debt collection, by state and month, Jan 2015 to Oct 2026. Read in full (142 monthly calls).
- Launch dates: Goss and Mangrum, Online Appendix Table A1, checked against Hollenbeck, Larsen and Proserpio, Supplementary Table 3. Read in full.
No corrections. First published November 12, 2026.