The headline numbers

The baseline: how common is problem gambling?

The National Council on Problem Gambling estimates that roughly 85% of US adults have gambled at least once in their lifetime and about 60% have gambled in the past year — gambling participation itself is close to universal. Against that base, NCPG estimates 2.5 million US adults (about 1% of the adult population) meet the criteria for a severe gambling problem in a given year, with another 5 to 8 million (2–3%) experiencing mild or moderate problems that don’t meet full diagnostic criteria but still cause real harm. Put together, somewhere between 3% and 4% of US adults — 7.5 to 10.5 million people — are dealing with some level of problem gambling at any given time, a base rate that has stayed roughly consistent even as the legal betting landscape around it has expanded dramatically since 2018.

What the national helpline is actually hearing in 2025

NCPG’s 2025 National Problem Gambling Helpline Annual Report — covering the helpline network that operated as 1-800-GAMBLER for part of the year before a 2025 licensing dispute forced NCPG to drop that number, and which now operates as 1-800-MY-RESET — logged 377,410 total contacts: 348,793 calls, 17,966 chats, and 10,651 texts. The overall national contact rate was 101.4 per 100,000 residents, down slightly from 107.1 in 2024, but that topline number hides a clear shift in what’s actually driving contacts. Online and app-based gambling became the single most commonly reported problem form in 2025, cited in 31.36% of contacts — up sharply from 22.77% in 2024 and now ahead of slots/electronic gaming machines (30.95%, down from 36.29%). Sports betting specifically was cited in 27.34% of contacts, up from 22.25% the year before. Financial struggles remained the dominant reason people reached out at all — 73.32% of contacts, up from 66.02% in 2024 — followed by mental health concerns (32.12%) and relationship problems (21.64%, up from 19.94%).

The age data points in a consistent direction: 18-to-24-year-olds made up 21.77% of contacts and 25-to-34-year-olds another 27.76% — nearly half of all contacts came from adults under 35, a share NCPG describes as showing “significant year-over-year increases” since 2023. Contacts also lasted longer on average in 2025 (106.4 seconds vs. 95.3 in 2024), which the report attributes to more complex cases requiring longer engagement with specialists.

The state-level pattern is the clearest evidence linking market structure to helpline demand: states with legal iGaming saw a contact rate of 162.8 per 100,000, nearly double the 99.9 rate in states without it. States with legal online sports betting saw 114.8 per 100,000 versus 101.8 without. Commercial casino states saw 120.4 versus 93.4 without. In every comparison, the presence of a legal, app-based betting product correlates with a meaningfully higher helpline contact rate.

The Legalization Risk Premium

NCPG publishes the raw contact rates above but doesn’t turn them into a comparison across market types — so we did. Converting each gap into a percentage difference produces the NewBonuses.com Legalization Risk Premium: legal iGaming carries a 63% helpline-contact-rate premium over states without it, legal commercial casinos carry a 29% premium, and legal online sports betting carries the smallest of the three, a 13% premium. That ordering is itself notable and runs against the assumption that sports betting — the product driving most of the current legalization debate — is the biggest driver of helpline demand. On this data, continuous-play casino and iGaming products are associated with a substantially larger jump in helpline contact rates than sports betting is.

The financial-harm research: bankruptcies, credit scores, and debt

The most rigorous study on this question comes from UCLA Anderson School of Management (Hollenbeck, 2025), which analyzed the University of California Consumer Credit Panel — roughly 7 million US consumers, 90 million quarterly observations, from March 2016 through June 2023 — using a difference-in-differences design across the 38 states that legalized sports gambling after the 2018 Supreme Court ruling (23+ of which added online/mobile access specifically). The core finding: in states with online sports betting access specifically, credit scores declined an average of 2.74 points (more than three times the 0.8-point decline seen from retail-only legalization), bankruptcies rose by roughly 10% — an estimated 30,000 additional bankruptcies annually — and debt sent to collections rose about 7.5%. These effects didn’t appear immediately; they showed up roughly two years after legalization, consistent with a slow accumulation of debt rather than a sudden shock. Auto loan delinquencies rose approximately 20% in states with general (non-online) access and 6% in online-access states; credit card delinquencies showed no significant effect either way. Critically, the harm wasn’t spread evenly — it concentrated heavily among “subprime” consumers, those with credit scores under 600 before legalization, meaning the financial cost of legal sports betting access falls disproportionately on people who were already financially vulnerable.

Separate Federal Reserve research on betting-related spending found bettors more than doubled their average quarterly spending on sports betting, from under $500 in December 2019 to over $1,000 by June 2021, and a New York Fed analysis found credit delinquency rates (payments 90+ days late) rose about 0.3% overall in states with legal sports betting — but spiked more than 10% specifically among the roughly 3% of the population who took up sports betting after it became legal in their state.

Self-exclusion enrollment: rising everywhere, reported nowhere consistently

Every state with legal gambling maintains some form of self-exclusion program — a voluntary list that bars a person from a casino, online platform, or sportsbook, typically for a fixed term or life. What’s notable is less any single number than the pattern across states: enrollment is climbing steadily nearly everywhere it’s tracked, and newer online-betting markets show the fastest growth. Maryland’s self-exclusion list, for example, grew from just 41 people when the state launched online sports betting in November 2022 to nearly 3,000 within about a year. Pennsylvania’s program has logged more than 20,000 exclusion requests from over 6,000 individuals, with 21% choosing a lifetime ban. New Jersey has more than 19,000 people self-excluded from online gaming alone. There is no single national registry — each state runs its own program on its own reporting schedule, which is itself a data gap: a bettor barred in one state can typically still gamble legally in another, and there is no unified, real-time picture of how many Americans are currently self-excluded nationwide.

How this compilation was built

Prevalence baseline. National prevalence estimates (2.5 million severe, 5–8 million mild/moderate) and lifetime/past-year gambling participation rates are as published by the National Council on Problem Gambling.

Helpline data. All 2025 helpline figures — contact volume, contact type, reasons for contact, problem-gambling form, demographics, and state-level contact rates — are drawn directly from NCPG’s 2025 National Problem Gambling Helpline Annual Report (published May 2026). Note the report itself flags that October–December 2025 data excludes the legacy 1-800-GAMBLER line during its transition to 1-800-MY-RESET, which understates the true year-end contact volume somewhat.

Financial-harm research. Credit score, bankruptcy, collections, and delinquency findings are drawn from Brett Hollenbeck’s UCLA Anderson study, “The Financial Consequences of Legalized Sports Gambling” (2025), using University of California Consumer Credit Panel data. Spending and delinquency figures are drawn from separately published Federal Reserve and New York Federal Reserve research as reported by NPR (April 2026).

Self-exclusion figures. State enrollment figures are drawn from state gaming board disclosures as compiled in trade and consumer press coverage; reporting dates vary by state (as recent as 2026, as dated as 2022–2023 in states with less frequent public reporting), which is itself part of the finding — there is no synchronized national reporting cadence for this data. Each figure should be treated as a snapshot as of its own reporting date, not a single point-in-time comparison across states.

Legalization Risk Premium calculation. Each premium is a simple percentage difference between NCPG’s own published 2025 contact rates: (with-market rate − without-market rate) ÷ without-market rate. iGaming: (162.8 − 99.9) ÷ 99.9 = 63.0%. Commercial casino: (120.4 − 93.4) ÷ 93.4 = 28.9%. Online sports betting: (114.8 − 101.8) ÷ 101.8 = 12.8%. This is a correlational comparison of published rates, not an adjusted or causal estimate — it doesn’t control for other state-level differences (demographics, overall gambling availability, helpline funding, etc.) the way the UCLA study’s difference-in-differences design does. We’re presenting it as what it is: a straightforward, transparent calculation from NCPG’s own numbers, not a peer-reviewed causal claim.

Limitations. Helpline contact volume is a proxy for problem gambling prevalence, not a direct census — it reflects who reached out, not everyone affected, and is shaped by helpline awareness and accessibility as much as by underlying need. The UCLA study is observational (difference-in-differences around legalization timing), not a randomized experiment, though its design is intended to isolate the effect of legalization specifically. This is a snapshot as of August 2026; NCPG’s next annual helpline report and any newer academic research should be checked before citing figures beyond that date.

Helpline contact rate per 100,000 residents — notable states, 2025

Self-exclusion enrollment — selected states

Citation & reuse. This compilation was produced by NewBonuses.com (August 2026), drawing on the National Council on Problem Gambling’s 2025 Helpline Annual Report, Brett Hollenbeck’s UCLA Anderson study on the financial consequences of legalized sports gambling, Federal Reserve and New York Federal Reserve research as reported by NPR, and state gaming board self-exclusion disclosures as compiled in trade press. The findings, tables and figures are free to cite, quote and reference with attribution and a link to this page. Journalists and researchers may contact us through the site for the underlying sourcing.

If you or someone you know is struggling with gambling, the National Problem Gambling Helpline is available 24/7, confidential, and free: call or text 1-800-MY-RESET (1-800-697-3738) or visit ncpgambling.org. (The former 1-800-GAMBLER number is no longer NCPG’s national helpline as of a 2025 licensing change.)