Recent Federal legislative changes in the United States have led some states to liberalize gambling regulations to allow sports betting, with many more on the way. In response to these changes in the United States gambling landscape, researchers, policymakers and the general public have expressed concerns that this expansion could have adverse effects on public health. Though we have very little evidence about sports betting in the United States, primarily because of the newness of the market, there are lessons we can learn about what we might expect in this emerging market from the case of daily fantasy sports (DFS). DFS subscriber behavior can provide valuable information about population patterns, potential risk factors, and exposure and adaptation trends we might expect to see as sports betting becomes more accessible. This webinar reviews recent work examining the actual play patterns of subscribers to a large daily fantasy sports provider with a focus on how these findings might provide insight about what to expect in the emerging US sports betting market.  

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Dr. Sarah Nelson is the director for research at the Division on Addiction, Cambridge Health Alliance, and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. At the Division, Nelson’s work covers many facets of addiction, including the relationship between psychiatric comorbidity and DUI offense, how best to develop community recovery environments for youth with substance use problems, and the distribution and determinants of gambling and gambling problems. Her gambling work includes studies of internet gambling and daily fantasy sports play, evaluations of responsible gambling programs, assessments of gambling treatment service systems, and the development of predictive models based on early online play patterns to detect subscribers who are at risk for gambling problems. Recently, Nelson has been working with actual player records from a large daily fantasy sports (DFS) providers to understand patterns of play across time.