Rigged: The Joker and the Thief
What are they winning and what are we losing?
American consistent traditions: apple pie, baseball, Tom Hanks, and the most anticipated part of any Super Bowl — the advertisements.
During Super Bowl LX, the ads were definitely… something. Beyond the uncanny valley of AI face-tuning and digital de-aging, one thing stood out: our economy increasingly looks propped up by a narrow set of pillars — crypto, artificial intelligence, weight-loss drugs, and of course, gambling.
As I’ve written before, gambling is becoming an ever-growing and ingratiating presence in this country. A presence fleecing younger generations of hard-earned money under the false promise of an easy win. Whether it’s overly complex parlays in sports betting, the rise of event contracts, or the pervasiveness of neighborhood slot machines, gambling is metastasizing in the bones of the United States.
What began with sports betting has seeped into nearly every facet of daily life. What started as slot machines and games of chance confined to casinos has made its way into corner stores. What once required physical travel, pit bosses, and oversight is now one tap away — on a phone that never leaves your side.
It is time to confront this growing problem before it becomes irreversible.
Sports Betting: When the Game is No Longer Fun
There was a time when sports betting was considered about as low as it got in athletics. Scandal after scandal — athletes rigging games, shaving points, throwing outcomes for payouts.
The 1919 Black Sox Scandal, when Chicago White Sox players fixed games at the direction of organized crime. Pete Rose wagering on himself in the 1970s — even if it was to win. Michael Jordan stepping away from basketball amid swirling gambling controversies.
For decades, once there was a federal ban on sports betting, those scandals became fewer and farther between. But when the Supreme Court struck down that federal ban in 2018, the pendulum swung back — and this time in a fully digitized, hyper-accessible environment.
In 2024, former Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter was banned for life from the NBA for violating league gaming rules. Investigators found he disclosed confidential information to bettors, limited his playing time to influence outcomes, and bet on NBA games. He even left games early on January 26 and March 20 to ensure “under” bets on his performance would hit.
Just this year, 39 players across 17 NCAA Division I basketball programs were charged in a multi-million-dollar point-shaving scheme.
And that’s just what we know about.
In 2018, Americans wagered less than $5 billion on sports.
By 2024, that number had exploded to $150 billion.
Today, roughly 90% of bets are placed on phones. More than half are live bets placed during games. Open any app and you’ll see hundreds of options per matchup — not just who wins, but whether the next pitch will be a ball or strike, whether Shohei Ohtani will hit a home run and record five strikeouts, whether LeBron James will score 30 points.
You don’t need to drive anywhere.
You don’t need cash.
You don’t even need to get out of bed.
It has never been easier to gamble.
And that ease — combined with how deeply embedded betting has become in sports culture — is taking its toll, particularly on young men.
Betting is marketed as entertainment. A bonding experience. A harmless add-on to the game. But beneath the surface, mounting evidence shows serious mental health risks — risks that often go unnoticed until they begin damaging relationships, finances, and emotional stability.
Betting apps are engineered the same way social media platforms are engineered — bright colors, bonus bets, push notifications, rapid outcomes. Each win or near-win triggers dopamine. For those wired for competition and instant feedback loops, it becomes incredibly difficult to step away.
And it’s no longer just simple win-or-loss wagers. Companies aggressively promote complicated parlays promising massive payouts. But parlays carry extremely low probabilities and a steep house edge — often generating negative returns between 15% and 30%. Every added leg increases the odds of total loss exponentially.
They look thrilling.
They are mathematically brutal.
And somewhere along the way, the game stops being fun.
You’re no longer rooting for your team — you’re rooting for an obscure stat line. A rebound total. A coin toss. You’re hoping a player you’ve never cared about misses a free throw because your “under” depends on it.
Team loyalty fades. The communal experience erodes. The sport becomes a financial instrument instead of shared culture.
That’s when normalized betting culture veers into something far more dangerous.
Event Contracts: Nothing in Life Is Guaranteed — Or Is It?
On January 7, 2026, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt abruptly ended what had been a relatively routine press conference at 64 minutes and 30 seconds — just under 65 minutes.
Normally, the exact duration of a White House briefing would be trivial. Anecdotal. Forgettable.
But to a handful of “predictive market traders,” it was extremely important.
On Kalshi, contracts had been purchased betting that the briefing would not exceed 65 minutes — an outcome that, based on pricing, had roughly a 2% chance of occurring. Those who bet against the over reportedly made 50 times their money.
The story gained traction on X after a user highlighted the trade. What made it more than internet gossip was the overlap: Donald Trump Jr. sits on the boards of both Kalshi and Polymarket. To many observers, it reeked of insider trading — the possibility that a White House press secretary could be influencing a market tied to a platform advised by the President’s son.
Maybe it was coincidence.
Maybe it wasn’t.
But the structure allows for it.
And that’s the deeper problem.
There have been darker examples.
One Polymarket account wagered that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would be removed from power before the end of January — netting roughly $400,000 when U.S. forces captured him on drug trafficking charges the very next day. The wager was so far out of left field that it’s hard to imagine someone placing it without knowledge of military operations about to unfold.
This is where event contracts stop looking like novelty bets and start resembling information arbitrage.
In response, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) introduced the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026, which would bar federal elected officials, executive branch employees, political appointees, and congressional staff from betting on government policy, action, or political outcomes when they have access to material non-public information.
These may sound like extreme examples. But they illustrate how political and governmental outcomes can be gamified — manipulated the same way point-shaving corrupts sports.
And it’s not just the predictive side that’s dangerous.
It’s the perception.
When major media outlets — like CNN partnering with Kalshi as its official predictive market partner — legitimize these platforms, they gain credibility with the public. Increasingly, political insiders and observers treat these markets as de facto polls. But they are not polls. They are thinly traded financial instruments vulnerable to concentrated capital.
If a candidate wants to appear more viable in a race, they could simply pump money into contracts bearing their name, artificially inflating implied odds.
If an administration wants to change public perception about how popular or unpopular a policy is, they could buy contracts reflecting the narrative they want.
If someone with access to non-public information wants quick, easy cash, they can wager on military operations, legislative maneuvers, regulatory actions — and walk away richer before the public even knows what happened.
And in every scenario, the people on the other side of that trade lose.
No matter how misguided or ill-advised some users may be, manipulation of these systems amounts to picking their pockets.
Approximately 70% of users on prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi have lost money, with profits heavily concentrated among a tiny fraction of elite traders. Users frequently report losing large sums rapidly, with some traders losing over on single events. Recent data indicates $500 million was lost in a single day on Kalshi, while 1.1 million Polymarket addresses recorded losses with some losing over 1 million. While millions lose, roughly 700 accounts managed to secure about $1 million each in profits, showing that very unbalanced distribution of wealth.
So again, the question becomes unavoidable:
What are they winning — and what are we losing?
There is a reason Kalshi and Polymarket advertise during events like the Super Bowl. There is a reason they recruit celebrity endorsers and attach their logos to major political accounts across X. Legitimacy drives participation. Participation drives deposits.
And deposits drive profit.
Mostly extracted from young adults betting on everything from award shows to Supreme Court decisions to geopolitical crises.
Right now, lawsuits are pending alleging these platforms operate as unregulated sports betting entities, avoiding taxes and oversight that traditional casinos face. But lawsuits alone are not sufficient.
Without clear regulation and enforcement, we are allowing political reality itself to become another casino floor — one where those closest to power can tilt the odds.
Skill games: Easy to play, hard to escape
There are currently thousands of illegal skill game machines that are operating within the Commonwealth of Virginia. Working Virginia Families are currently losing thousands of dollars a day on them from their hard earned pay checks. These have been illegal for years now and yet they have not gone away. Proponents of these machines will say that we are missing out on all the revenue but they are missing the broader point: who pays for that revenue.
I live in Herndon in Western Fairfax County where I grew up, and over the past couple of years, I have seen these machines pop up in convenience stores, barber shops, and local businesses.
For example, there is a 7/11 on the corner of Elden St and Alabama Dr and for those who grew up in Herndon like me, we know that this is the 7/11 where folks go to look for day labor and that neighborhood has a massive immigrant population in the surrounding developments. And since these machines have popped up, the guys who get off at work on Friday and are paid in cash go into that 7/11 and pump whatever money they got into those machines. They line up sometimes out the door and sit there watching as person after person loses and walks off with nothing. Maybe 1 person hits but that allure keeps them coming back. That’s where this revenue comes from.
And this is, at its core, a matter of equity.
Are we really willing to allow a business model that siphons money out of lower-income neighborhoods and funnels it to out-of-state investors — all while pretending it’s good for “small businesses”?
That is not a justice-oriented approach. It’s exploitation with a friendly marketing veneer. For too long, companies like Pace-O-Matic have operated as though Virginia’s laws are optional — exploiting gray areas, pushing enforcement boundaries, and expanding while regulators play catch-up. The solution is not complicated.
Strengthen the existing ban.
Prohibit new terminals.
Enforce the laws already on the books.
The data is clear: these machines disproportionately target vulnerable communities. They offer limited long-term benefit to the Commonwealth. They create public safety concerns, fuel addiction, and destabilize local economies far more than they support them.
This is not economic development. It is extraction.
Virginia has a real opportunity to reverse course before this becomes permanent infrastructure — before convenience store gambling becomes normalized in every community.
And our communities deserve nothing less.
Conclusion: What Are They Winning — and What Are We Losing?
At minimum, we need a single, empowered entity capable of regulating — or stopping — this entire ecosystem before it spins further out of control.
Because if we allow these services to continue operating unchecked, the outcome is not abstract. It is predictable. Thousands more people will lose money. Mental health crises will deepen. Debt will pile up quietly in bedrooms and dorm rooms and break rooms across the Commonwealth.
As the Virginia Agriculture and Forestry Secretary Katie Frazier stated in a testimony last week,
“Our patchwork approach is inefficient. It creates gaps in oversight and makes it more difficult to protect consumers, collect reliable data and ensure fair and responsible gameplay.” Governor Spanberger is deeply concerned about any discussions of gaming expansion in Virginia without first establishing a single entity with clear authority, consistent standards and strong compliance and enforcement capabilities.”
That is not anti-business.
It is pro-consumer.
It is pro-family.
It is pro-common sense.
Gambling revenue is not a panacea for budget gaps. It is not an economic development strategy. It is not a substitute for responsible fiscal policy.
It is, more often than not, a regressive tax — one extracted from working families in communities like mine.
There’s a reason Gamblers Anonymous says there is no such thing as a sure thing. Betting on gambling to fix revenue shortfalls is itself a gamble — one paid for by those least able to afford it.
It is an injustice to claim we are “supporting small businesses” or “generating revenue for the Commonwealth” while building that revenue on the backs of day laborers feeding cash into corner-store machines, young men chasing parlays at 2 a.m., or families quietly juggling debt they can no longer manage.
So if you live in Virginia, contact your representatives. Urge them to oppose the legalization of skill machines and unchecked i-gambling. Support Delegate Krizek’s proposal for a dedicated Gambling Commission with real authority and oversight.
Virginia should not profit off private ruin and vice.
Because at the end of the day, this isn’t about entertainment. It isn’t about innovation. It isn’t about modernization.
It’s about whether we are going to let our sports, our politics, and our communities be turned into casino floors — where the house always wins.
And the house is not you.
Thank you, Matt. I appreciate the gaps in my various feeds that your Substack fills. Fellow Herndon resident here—I don’t drive by that 7-11 as much as I used to so this is heartbreaking to hear. I’m also a parent of young men, and the gambling issue is definitely a concern. I am glad to know there’s more concern in VA beyond the casino. I will reach out to my rep.