Browse
Log in / Register
Share
NEW YORK — June 4, 2025 — A 10-week experiment by ProPublica designed to stress-test the safeguards of online sports betting ended with an unusual loyalty reward: a DraftKings VIP invitation. The trigger wasn't savvy wagering or steady bankroll management. It was a night in which the reporter lost nearly $1,800 by doubling down after bad beats—a pattern addiction experts recognize as loss chasing. The invite arrived the next day.
The project was simple on paper: act like someone who can't stop gambling and see whether the company treats you as a customer worth protecting or a customer worth cultivating. The reporter opened an account under his own name, connected it to his own debit card, and volunteered that he was a reporter. ProPublica funded the bankroll. A working group made up of addiction specialists, former problem gamblers and professional sports bettors outlined the warning signs to reproduce: betting right after losing, raising stakes to win money back, jumping rapidly between sports, and playing casino games late into the night.
For the first week, the betting stayed modest and mostly confined to NBA playoff games. The first real red flag came during a Knicks-Hawks playoff game, when he lost close to $1,800 in a session driven by chasing losses. A night like that is not a typical bad game for a recreational bettor; it is a wake-up call for someone in trouble. For DraftKings, it was apparently an opportunity.
The next morning, the reporter took a train to Boston for a gambling-addiction symposium hosted by the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University School of Law. During the event, researchers laid out the uncomfortable economics: sportsbooks make a large share of their money from a small group of heavy losers. A 2024 Connecticut study found that 1.8% of problem gamblers generated 51% of sports betting revenue.
At 5:01 p.m., during the closing remarks, the invitation landed: “Welcome to the DraftKings VIP Showcase.”
The invite began a three-week tryout, not an instant promotion. Each week brought a new promotion and a test to decide whether the reporter was a genuine “whale” or a “sharp” in disguise. The distinction matters. Professional bettors, who use data to find mispriced odds, cut into profits and are quickly limited by sportsbook algorithms. So-called squares—casual bettors who lose more often—don't face those limits. The reporter was a square.
And the VIP program's terms made chasing high-odds bets even more attractive. Longer-odds wagers earned loyalty points faster, pushing players toward the next tier. The tiers ran from bronze to silver to gold, and the fine print made the incentive structure explicit: risk more on long shots, move up faster.
Later, during a French Open binge, the contradictions became impossible to ignore. In one stretch, the reporter placed 64 bets while sitting at his desk and lost $4,500 in 24 hours. The app eventually intervened with a message that read, “Take a loss? Now take a beat.”
He used the linked responsible-gaming page to set a two-hour daily app limit and a $100 deposit cap. Thirty minutes later, DraftKings sent a promotional alert luring him back to betting opportunities.
That pattern repeated over the full 10 weeks. The reporter lost about $12,500 in total and played 500 rounds of blackjack in a single weekend—roughly half of all his bets during the project. The casino component matters. Sportsbooks are pushing hard into online casinos, where gamblers can cycle through rounds in seconds and lose money much faster than on a typical game.
DraftKings argues that its responsible gaming system provides real protection. Lori Kalani, the company's chief responsible gaming officer, told ProPublica that the industry is “doing a good job” of educating people, raising awareness, and monitoring accounts. She said the company will proactively close accounts when customers show serious signs of harm.
DraftKings declined to say how often that actually happens. The New York Times has reported that DraftKings uses machine learning and data scientists to identify losing customers and send them targeted promotions to keep them active. The company rejected any implication that its marketing is unfair or improperly targets customers.
The findings land in a volatile moment. Since the Supreme Court cleared the way for sports betting in 2018, more than $600 billion has been wagered in the U.S. Sports betting is now legal in 39 states and Washington, D.C. A Siena Research Institute survey found that about a quarter of active sportsbook account holders had lost so much at some point that they would struggle to meet financial obligations.
Lawmakers in states including Colorado and Massachusetts are now weighing stricter consumer protections. Researchers like Darragh McGee of the University of Bath compare the engagement tactics to social media design: the goal is to keep users inside the product, and the same tools that make apps addictive are now being used to maximize betting volume.
The most telling result of the experiment may be the sequence itself. One night of ruinous loss-chasing earned a VIP audition. One afternoon of voluntary limit-setting earned a new promotional push. The responsible-gaming center was always a click away. It was just outmatched by the product around it.
