It’s ‘A Portal to Hell’: Dave Ramsey Slams Sports Betting Apps Because States That Legalized It Saw Bankruptcies Jump 10%

The figure that follows online sports betting around is that legalizing it drove bankruptcy filings up 25% to 30%. The researchers behind it no longer say that. In the July 2024 draft of “The Financial Consequences of Legalized Sports Gambling,” Brett Hollenbeck, Poet Larsen, and Davide Proserpio put the increase at roughly 27%. In the April 2025 version of the same paper, they put it at roughly 10%, which they translate as about nine additional filings per 100,000 people, or, in their words, “about 7,000 more bankruptcies a quarter, or roughly 30,000 more bankruptcies a year.”

That is still a large number of people. It is also about a third of the figure that has been circulating, and the correction has gone almost entirely unreported while the original keeps being quoted.

Dave Ramsey is among those making the broader case. In a segment from his show that he posted earlier this year, Ramsey said: “The fastest-growing addiction that is destroying young men in their 20s is online sports gambling. FanDuel is a portal to hell.” He went on to say the companies are “screwing an entire generation of young men because you don’t win,” and that this is why they can afford the advertising. Ramsey, who has called the housing market the most unrealistic in 100 years, was describing what he says his own counselors are seeing rather than citing research.

The two companies he named are listed, multibillion-dollar stocks. DraftKings (DKNG) is currently worth about $10.8 billion, and FanDuel’s parent, Flutter Entertainment (FLUT), is trading north of $15 billion, so this is big business and certainly impacting millions.

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The authors of the report use the University of California Consumer Credit Panel, roughly 4.4 million individuals, and about 90 million quarterly observations between March 2016 and June 2023, with a staggered difference-in-differences design exploiting the order in which states legalized. The bankruptcy effect appears only after a lag of about two years. They also find debt collections up about 8% and auto loan delinquencies up, while credit card delinquency shows no significant effect.

Their most important caveat is their own. They write that they “do not observe which members of the credit panel are actively engaged in sports betting,” so what they measure is an average across everyone in a state, bettors and non-bettors alike. They then note that if 13% to 20% of people bet, the effect on actual bettors would be several times larger. 

A second and frequently conflated paper, “Gambling Away Stability” by Scott Baker, Justin Balthrop, Mark Johnson, Jason Kotter, and Kevin Pisciotta, contains no bankruptcy finding at all. Tracking 230,171 households through transaction data, it finds that when 7.7% place online sports bets, credit card balances among low-savings households rise about $368 relative to less constrained ones, and each dollar bet is associated with a $3.07 reduction in net investments. Barchart has covered what the account-balance data shows about bettors separately.

The companies themselves disclose a picture that complicates the growth story. DraftKings reported 3.6 million Monthly Unique Payers in the second quarter of 2026, up about 9% year over year, but average revenue per payer of $132, down roughly 13%. Flutter reported 3.843 million Average Monthly Players in its U.S. segment, U.S. stakes of about $11.96 billion, and a U.S. sportsbook net revenue margin of 8.7%, down from 10.4% a year earlier. 

Neither company publicly responded to Ramsey’s remarks. Both publish responsible-gambling commitments: Flutter reported that 47.3% of its active online customers used a “Play Well” tool during 2025 against a target of 50% by the end of 2026, and DraftKings has said it has distributed more than $2 million to state problem-gambling councils since 2022 and appointed a chief responsible gaming officer in 2024.

Survey evidence is thinner than either side’s rhetoric. A U.S. News survey of 1,200 recent bettors, fielded in July 2025 through an opt-in panel with no published margin of error, found about a quarter saying they had been unable to pay a bill because of wagers. Its September 2026 wave dropped that question and reported betting-related debt falling from 30% to 19%.

On the date of publication, Caleb Naysmith did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.