About Bet On Change
A bipartisan advocacy organization working to protect Americans from the predatory mobile gambling industry.
Why We Exist
In 2018, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, striking down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) — the federal law that had effectively banned commercial sports betting in most of the country for over two decades. The ruling did not legalize sports gambling. It simply told states they were free to do so themselves.
What followed was one of the fastest regulatory gold rushes in American history. Within a few years, dozens of states opened their doors to mobile sports betting platforms. Billion-dollar corporations — many of them headquartered offshore — flooded the market with apps designed to make wagering as frictionless as checking the weather. Americans went from a nation where sports betting was largely illegal to one where a teenager could watch a football game on the couch and, with a few taps on a phone, lose hundreds of dollars before halftime.
Bet On Change was founded in response to this transformation. We are a nonprofit advocacy organization built on the belief that the rapid, unregulated expansion of mobile sports gambling represents a serious public health threat — and that the political establishment has failed to respond with the urgency the crisis demands.
Our work is rooted in the conviction that this is not a partisan issue. The gambling industry harms communities across the political spectrum. Tribal nations see their gaming sovereignty undercut. Conservative families watch their sons fall into debt. Progressive coalitions see predatory corporations target vulnerable populations. The damage does not respect party lines, and neither does our approach.
Our Approach
Bet On Change operates at the intersection of policy research, legislative advocacy, and coalition building. Our work spans multiple states and engages stakeholders from both sides of the aisle — because meaningful gambling reform will only happen when it has broad, bipartisan support.
Bet On Change’s policy efforts have included direct engagement with tribal leaders, state legislators, and advocacy coalitions across multiple states. That work has involved meetings with legislators of both parties in Washington, Oklahoma, Florida, and California — states where the intersection of tribal sovereignty, gambling expansion, and public health creates the most urgent need for reform.
A central pillar of our approach is partnership with tribal nations. In states with strong Native sovereignty frameworks, tribal gaming operations represent not just an economic engine but a hard-won exercise of self-determination. The unchecked expansion of mobile sports betting threatens to undercut those operations, funneling revenue away from tribal communities and into the pockets of multinational tech-gambling conglomerates. We work alongside tribal coalition partners to oppose this encroachment and advocate for frameworks that protect tribal interests.
Beyond tribal partnerships, we develop model legislation and policy frameworks designed to curb the most predatory aspects of mobile gambling — from spending limits and self-exclusion tools to advertising restrictions modeled after the tobacco regulations that transformed American public health a generation ago.
The Problem We Face
The modern gambling industry is not the casino of your grandfather’s generation. It is an algorithmically optimized, behaviorally engineered machine built to maximize engagement at the expense of its users’ financial and psychological well-being. Mobile apps eliminate every natural friction point that once protected people from their worst impulses: the drive to a casino, the physical exchange of cash, the social visibility of the act. Today, gambling happens invisibly, instantly, and endlessly — on the same device people use to check their email.
The advertising assault is equally relentless. During any major sporting event, Americans are bombarded with gambling advertisements that normalize wagering and target young men with messaging designed to associate betting with masculinity, excitement, and social belonging. The parallels to Big Tobacco’s playbook from decades past are striking — and the public health consequences are becoming just as devastating.
Despite broad public concern about gambling’s harms, there remains a troubling lack of political will to act. The gambling industry spends heavily on lobbying and campaign contributions. States, seduced by the promise of tax revenue, have been slow to impose meaningful restrictions. And millions of Americans — disproportionately young men — continue to pay the price.