As interim director of UAlbany's Center for Behavioral Health Promotion and Applied Research, Jessica Martin is among a relatively small number of researchers tracking the impacts of widespread gambling legalization — particularly on college students. We spoke to her about who's at risk, what problem gambling looks like in the age of mobile sports betting and prediction markets, and how to convince policymakers to take it seriously as a public health problem.
One of the most interesting gambling debates happening in New York right now is not about casinos (New York has long since legalized and licensed them), or mobile sports betting (also now legal, with some limits, since 2022).
It’s about online prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, which let users buy and sell so-called “event contracts” on things that may or may not happen in sports, politics, culture and the economy.
Like, say, will the U.S. go to war with Iran, or will the Los Angeles Angels defeat the Baltimore Orioles by more than 2.5 runs?
According to the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates these markets, event contracts are akin to other financial derivatives traded among users on commodity markets. One major difference from traditional betting is that there is no bookie or “House” setting the odds. The prices are set by the evolving consensus of the market.
But if buying and selling event contracts on whether the Angels will cover the point spread feels a lot like sports betting to you, well, New York State Attorney General Letitia James agrees.
James sued Kalshi for $36 billion in July alleging its operations amount to unregulated sports gambling in violation of New York law. New York had previously sued cryptocurrency firms Coinbase and Gemini Titan on similar grounds, and many states are pushing for greater regulation.
Whether or not the markets meet the legal definition of gambling, they’re easily accessible via mobile devices and used by college students for many of the same reasons.
We asked Jessica about that in part of our conversation that didn’t make the final edit.
Host: I think of things that are not casinos — but well, maybe they are? Things like financial markets, things like crypto, or even prediction marketplaces. You can bet on almost anything. The technology has made it so easy. Should we be paying more attention to that now, maybe perhaps as we should have with the sports betting stuff a decade ago?
JM: Yes, we do ask that question in our research if students are engaging in that activity, and there's about a quarter of students who are. So it is happening, and it isn't illegal right now, and it isn't considered gambling, but that's the legal fight right now.
It sure looks a lot like gambling, and this is maybe an opportunity to catch this before it really becomes a bigger issue like some of the other gambling activities have. Certainly, it looks like it's coming just the way that mobile sports betting did.
If you or someone you know is dealing with problem gambling or substance use, you can reach the NY HOPEline by calling 1-877-8-HOPENY (467369) or texting HOPENY (467369)
UAlbany's Counseling & Psychological Services and Office of Health Promotion have a wealth of resources for students.
Know the Odds is another tool for understanding problem gambling, as is newyorkproblemgamblinghelp.org.
If you’re looking for help, the New York State Office of Addiction Services and Supports (OASAS) has a tool to find nearby treatment programs and other services.
If you’re interested in an in-depth look at how the legalization of sports betting happened so quickly in the United States, check out Michael Lewis’ podcast Against the Rules, which did an entire season on the subject.
Jessica’s other work, through a federally funded program known as Project ACCESS, has focused on HIV, substance use and suicide prevention. Read more about that here.
Audio editing and production by Scott Freedman
Photo provided
Hosted and written byJordan Carleo-Evangelist
[0:01] Host: Before we begin, a quick note. This week's episode includes mention of substance abuse and suicide. If you or someone you know is experiencing a crisis, you can contact New York’s Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.
[0:19] Host: Welcome to The Short Version, the UAlbany podcast that tackles big ideas, big questions and big news in less time than it takes to cross the Academic Podium. I'm Jordan Carleo-Evangelist in UAlbany's Office of Communications and Marketing.
[0:35] Jessica Martin: It speaks to the public health importance of this issue, I think. We now have a lot more data that of all the addictive behaviors, problem gambling has the highest suicide attempt and completion rate. And I think that's very important for people to be mindful of. And there's a lot of research and questions about why is that? And I think the financial consequences, the social consequences of problem gambling are so high.
[1:02] Host: You can't listen to or watch sports talk these days without getting bombarded by gambling information. Point spreads, over/unders, injury reports. The come-ons for bonus bets and exotic parlays are everywhere on social media, the billboards all over buses and inside stadiums. This summer's World Cup may go down as the biggest gambling bonanza in U.S. history, eclipsing by some measures the men's and women's NCAA basketball tournaments combined.
For some of us, this is a dizzying reversal from a time when gambling was shunned by leagues and absent from the nightly banter on Sports Center. That's because sports betting was largely against the law until a landmark 2018 Supreme Court case set widespread legalization in motion, including here in New York.
For young people today, increasingly including college students, it's hard to recall a time when it was any different. And it's not just sports. Federally regulated prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket look a lot like gambling sites and entice people to wager on almost anything, including as of this recording, how much Arctic Sea ice will have this year and when the next big one will hit California. New York is currently suing Kalshi for $36 billion, alleging it's effectively an illegal gambling operation. All this happened as smartphones made it frictionless to gamble anytime from anywhere.
Jessica Martin is a psychologist and the interim director of UAlbany’s Center for Behavioral Health Promotion and Applied Research. An expert on addiction, Jessica has spent the last half-decade collecting data to understand the consequences of America's sudden shift on gambling. The short version is: they're not good.
More young people are gambling. More of them report symptoms of problem gambling — anxiety, debt, concurrent drug or alcohol use. Young men, students of color, and people with lower incomes all seem to be at greater risk, and there's almost no research funding to study it.
We talked to Jessica about the reality of gambling on college campuses, the quiet toll it takes on people struggling with it, how thinking about it as a public health problem like alcohol might help, and how financial literacy education can help those most at risk avoid seeking salvation in hopelessly long odds.
This is the second of two conversations to open our fall season about how technology can supercharge problematic behaviors in all of us — but among young people especially. If you missed last week's episode on social media, youth mental health, and how we can all build healthier habits, be sure to check it out.
Here's our conversation.
[3:47] Host: What was your path to becoming interested in and studying addictive behavior and eventually studying problem gambling? What was your initial entryway into this field?
[3:57] JM: I think a couple of factors influenced my path into addictive behaviors. One, family. And we know from research that most everyone has been touched by addiction in some way, shape or form. And then a really formative experience as a master's student in a mental health counseling training program working at the local VA hospital and being placed, just by chance, being assigned to what they call their chemical dependency unit. So working with veterans with substance-use disorders and just being really one fascinated by addiction and just all of the various biological, neurological, psychological, social components, particularly from people who have been to war and been in very challenging situations. And then there was a researcher here who, Dr. Matt Martens, was an addictive behaviors researcher. And so all of those things kind of coincided at the time to say like, "You know what? I know I'm going on to become a psychologist and to pick a research path as part of my studies in future career. And this seems like the one that's most interesting and most meaningful."
[5:01] Host: How did gambling behavior among young people, and specifically on college campuses, come to be something that interests you?
[5:07] JM: So I've been here at the university for 21 years now. Throughout that time, I've always been looking at addictive behaviors among college students. And for about 20 years, there's been an annual health behavior survey administered to students on this campus. Through that survey, we've seen co-occurrence of problematic health compromising behaviors, mental health conditions, addictive behaviors among students. And one of the things we didn't look at systematically was gambling. But in 2018 is when the federal government legalized sports wagering, which we knew would be highly appealing to college students in particular. So it was around that time that we started thinking this is really something that we need to start looking at systematically in our annual survey. So we put some measures in there and the measures have changed over time, but that's when we started looking at gambling behavior and it was quickly apparent that it does co-occur with other problematic behaviors among college students.
So health compromising behaviors, mental health conditions, substance use, and the mechanisms are largely similar among all kinds of addictive behaviors. So that's really where my interest got piqued in gambling and problem gambling. And well, ever since 2022, really, in New York State when mobile sports wagering was legalized, we've seen an explosion in gambling behaviors.
[6:08] Host: There is, it seems, a significant policy incentive not to find a problem or at least not to visualize the full scope of the problem. A lot of money has been invested and there's a lot of money to be reaped from the behavior and this activity. I mean, is it difficult to be that voice who's like, “Wait a minute, maybe this isn't as great as we thought.”
[6:51] JM: I will say there's not people knocking at my door to hear what I have to say about problem gambling. So that's probably an indication. But I do think that while yes, there is a vested interest in not finding a problem there, at the same time, there is a lot of interest in this area. More and more, I do experience an increasing interest in the topic. And even our governor in 2026 had problem gambling as part of her State of the State Address. So I do think it's getting more public attention. I think there are some real efforts behind this in New York State to investigate the prevalence and also to put money behind prevention and treatment. So I think it's an exciting time actually in that regard as a researcher because a lot of what we're doing is cutting edge. There aren't a whole lot of folks out there studying this, at least to the scale that we are now.
[7:40] Host: College campuses are an interesting place to study this. Theoretically, nobody who isn't 21 in New York is betting on sports or entering a legal casino. How do you effectively study the incidence of a behavior that forces the people doing it to acknowledge that they're breaking the law?
[8:01] JM: Yeah. We know, though, as you alluded to, that students are gambling. It's 18 for certain kinds of gambling activities. For others, it's 21. The way that we administer surveys here anyway, and this is true for whether I'm looking at alcohol use or cannabis or anything that is illegal or that students are not supposed to be doing on a college campus, everything is anonymous, confidential, and students by and large are pretty honest in their self-report of their behaviors. So I do have a high level of trust in what people are self-reporting. We do know from other self-report studies and the studies of self-report data that it's pretty reliable.
[8:37] Host: And what does your data tell you?
[8:40] JM: So I told you that we've been collecting data here at UAlbany. We collect data from about 1200 students per semester. And the incidents of gambling and problem gambling have increased. So in 2024, we found that in the fall about 47 percent of students said they had engaged in any kind of gambling activity in their lifetime. And then the same survey in 2025, we found that 67 percent of students indicated that they had engaged in some form of gambling.
[9:10] Host: How in the context of that survey, or sort of the larger examination of this issue, do you distinguish between gambling and problem gambling?
[9:19] JM: We also included a measure here at UAlbany that is a screener for problem gambling. And it has to do with the number of consequences that a student endorses, the frequency of their gambling behavior, et cetera. So what we found there was that of the people who are gambling, so that 45-to-50 percent of students, if they indicated at least one activity in the past month and a consequence, like have you had problems financially that is a result of your gambling? Are you lying to friends and family members about your gambling? Do you find yourself chasing losses? So going back to gamble because you've lost money that you want to make back. Do you experience stress or anxiety if you're not gambling? We found about 45 percent of those students met the criteria for problem gambling, which I think is very alarming.
[10:11] Host: Your other research background is in problematic substance use, addictive behavior. And I wonder, are the mechanisms at play psychologically for someone who has a substance use problem similar to those in someone who might have a gambling problem?
[10:27] JM: Yeah, the underlying mechanisms both neurobiologically and psychologically are quite similar. Gambling acts on the same sort of reward system in the brain that other chemical substances and process addictions, which is what gambling is considered. Just speaking to the psychological components, we see overlap in some of the personality traits that are drivers of addictive behavior. So things like sensation seeking, impulsivity, emotion regulation is another big one. So people saying that they drink alcohol or use cannabis or gamble both because it's fun and it's exciting, and so for positive emotion reasons, and also to cope with negative emotions. Similar drivers are also things like peer and family influence, cultural norms. So if you see your peers gambling or you think it's normative, you're more likely to do that yourself. People who see gambling in their family are more likely to eventually gamble themselves.
[11:31] Host: So you used a term there that I had not heard before. I think you said process.
addiction. What does that mean?
[11:36] JM: It's addictions to things that are not chemicals. So behavioral addictions would be another synonym for that. So compulsive sexual behavior is another one. So an addiction to a behavior or a process rather than a substance.
[11:51] Host: Does our brain view the reward system from a process addiction versus say a substance the same? Does it feel the same, activate the same, in the brain?
[12:02] JM: Yeah, certainly the research is being done. And when you look at a brain under the influence of a substance, cocaine, alcohol, and gambling, the brain reacts in just the same way. Just the same way.
[12:17] Host: What's your perspective on the way that we treat problem gambling as a public health problem? And how does it differ from the way we treat other forms of addiction?
[12:27] JM: To date, there is a difference in the way in which the public at large sees it and treats it. It isn't treated the same way like opiates, for example. But it is more similar to alcohol in that sense. Alcohol, I think, is clearly a public health problem, but we do think like, “Well, if you have a couple of drinks, that's OK.” But there's some threshold, there's some tolerance level we seem to have for like, well, if you have that many or if you act in that way because you drank alcohol, then it's a problem. Gambling fits sort of in that same line of thinking for many people. If you gambled a little bit or just once in a while, or you just do certain kinds of gambling activities, that's okay. But if you pass a certain threshold, society views that as now it's a problem.
We have images and stereotypes around that, like what it is to be a problem gambler. And I think that some of the research coming out now is challenging that. People used to think of a problem gambler as someone who was sitting in a casino in front of a slot machine for 14 hours. No, we're seeing 45 percent of college students who said they've gambled now are meeting criteria for problem gambling, and they are not sitting for 12 hours in a casino. They are functioning, they are going to work in school, and they're young adults who now are addicted to this behavior that's very rewarding to them.
[13:42] Host: With gambling, it's become so thoroughly integrated into our culture. There's advertisements everywhere. A lot of the sports talk hosts talk about it. It's hard to fault young people. It seems only natural that they would be drawn into it. I wonder if one of the solutions is more strict regulation of the marketing around sports betting, the marketing around gambling in general.
[14:10] JM: And we actually asked this question about to what extent they think that sports wagering advertisements impact college students' choice about whether or not they gamble on sports. And I think it was over 70 percent said “yes.” I thought that was very interesting because students are aware that these ads are really impacting theirs and their friends' behaviors. So I do think that's a prime target for prevention efforts, right? That if we had limits to the number of ads that we're on, I think it could make a big difference.
[14:48] Host: It all feels like similar to the way with mobile devices where things happen so fast and the technology changed so fast. It feels like we're living in a little bit of an experiment in terms of what the long-term effects of all this will be. Is there a possibility that 20 years from now we look back and a lot of the worst-case scenarios where we think the data may be pointing to today just aren't really borne out? If you had a sense of whether or not the consequences of legalization will be as significant, more significant, or less significant than we think.
[15:21] JM: It's not really a guess because we already have hard data to say that, yes, the worst case scenario could happen. We are already seeing negative consequences from legalizing this. And so without safeguards put in place, without prevention and intervention initiatives, I do think this is going to continue to worsen. In New York State, I think the number is 26 percent increase in calls to problem gambling hotlines after legalization of sports betting. So that's hard data to say, yeah, there's an increase in the number of people who are saying, "I think I have a problem with gambling." I don't think we're blowing this out of proportion. It's here, it's here to stay. And I think we are behind the ball here. We are really playing catch up in terms of figuring out who's most at risk and what do we do about it.
[16:10] Host: What's the prescription for prevention and intervention? What kinds of programs and services should we be investing in?
[16:18] JM: So some of that is a little bit unknown because of this data issue and the funding issue that we were talking about earlier. But we do know what works for other addictive behaviors, and the processes are similar. And so I think we can think about what we know works for other concerns and apply it to gambling. But there's actually other researchers, even here at the University at Albany. Dr. Elga Wulfert designed a cognitive behavioral intervention specifically for gambling and has published findings on its effectiveness above and beyond other forms like self-help groups, for example, Gamblers Anonymous — that it is more effective than Gamblers Anonymous for treating problem gambling. And so we know that motivational interviewing works. It's designed for the clinician or interventionist to meet the person where they're at, to be able to assess their thoughts about the behavior. What are the pros and cons of the behavior?
How does it fit in their life and with their values and their goals? And what do they like about the behavior? How does it get in the way? Yes, there are these pros, but you're also telling me that you experience this number of negative consequences. It really is getting in the way of your studying or you're not showing up to work. How ready are you or how important is it for you to want to change your gambling behavior? Screening brief intervention and referral to treatment is kind of a gold standard prevention initiative that we know works. That's the intervention that my group here is testing. The first step is to screen everybody. The idea, it is a public health initiative. So it's just like when you go to the doctor and almost all of us have been asked how much you drink alcohol and you get scored on the audit usually is the tool that you're given.
So here on campus we're screening as many students as we can for problem gambling. And then our interventionists, who are peer prevention navigators, they're trained in motivational interviewing and our specific SBIRT protocol to then be able to give the student the feedback that they are scoring at risk for problem gambling and have a motivational interviewing-based conversation with them around their interest in changing their gambling behavior.
[18:21] Host: One of the things that I find interesting about studying the population of college students, too, is that it is a demographic that is already somewhat in a financially perilous situation. And then when you add to that a potential process addiction or problem gambling, it seems like it can have a compounding effect.
[18:43] JM: We have asked students about gambling their financial aid. And about 25 percent of students say, “Yes, I have used financial aid money to gamble.” So that is striking in and of itself. There is this disproportionate effect likely on students who may already be lower income. And we also ask students about their motivations for gambling. And of course, a lot of students indicate it's fun, it's exciting, it's social, but there is a large proportion of students who also say it's related to debt and financial resources, wanting to gamble to make money.
And we know that that doesn't work. The house always wins. The gambling app always wins. So I think that's a financial literacy piece too, right? This idea that we should be talking to college students. We should be talking to students probably before they get to college. That should be a part of the financial literacy education that they receive, if they receive it at all, about gambling is not the answer.
One of the unique things about problem gambling is that it can be done in secret to some degree more than other addictions. You don't notice the impact of gambling on a person's appearance necessarily, or the way that they're behaving, like you do when they ingest some kind of a substance. And so I think it can go unnoticed for a longer period of time. And in that period of time, you can be racking up some pretty severe consequences.
And people have drained their life savings and their family's life savings before it's been flagged as a problem. And I think there's some level of desperation and shame that comes with that. I mean, there are obviously some warning signs that folks can look for, but I think they aren't always as obvious or you don't necessarily immediately think to pair those things you've noticed with problem gambling.
[21:00] Host: That was Jessica Martin, interim director of UAlbany’s Center for Behavioral Health Promotion and Applied Research. Jessica is also a research fellow in the School of Education's Department of Educational & Counseling Psychology.
To learn more about how sports gambling went from underground to everywhere in just a few short years, and whether Jessica thinks we may have a brief window to avoid some of the same mistakes with prediction markets, be sure to check out The Longer Version in our show notes. We've also included some links to resources if you or someone you know is dealing with problem gambling.
The Short Version would not be possible without contributions from many people, including editing and audio production by Scott Friedman and UAlbany's Digital Media Studio, deep inside the Podium tunnels. Like a casino, there's lots of cameras, very bright lights and no windows.
We'll be back next week with another quick conversation about something interesting. I'm Jordan Carleo-Evangelist here at the University at Albany, and this has been The Short Version.