North Carolina legalizes online sports betting ahead of ACC men's basketball tournament

Rosa Li, a professor in the UNC department of neuroscience and psychology, said gambling, like substance abuse disorders, can activate specific reward activation pathways involved with cues or cravings. She said that pathological gambling, called gambling disorder, has recently been listed as a condition for future study in the DSM-5, a handbook for mental health practitioners.

“That's the American Psychological Association saying we should be on the lookout for this as a potential problem,” Li said. “Therefore, we should be devoting resources to studying it better and determining if it warrants becoming kind of a full-fledged disorder that we put in the official full handbook.”

Christopher Mclaughlin, a professor at the UNC School of Governmentsaid allowing people to engage in sports gambling may encourage the possibility of gambling addictions developing among young adults, including college students. However, the new sports gambling law is relevant due to its potential to be a new revenue source for the state, he said.

One of the arguments for the law was the presence of gambling tax revenue in Virginia and Tennessee — states that border North Carolina and already legalized online sports betting.

“The numbers are many, many billions,” Mclaughlin said. “If you look simply at Virginia, a state that is a little smaller but roughly similar in size to North Carolina, there were over $5 billion of bets legally placed in Virginia in 2023.”

The N.C. General Assembly’s Fiscal Research Division estimated that about $64.6 million in revenue will be generated for the state within the first year of the law’s implementation.

While Whelan said he thinks gambling can be a form of enjoyment for its users, he also said there may be downsides regarding the rapid growth and remote aspect of online sports betting because of the lack of regulations.

“We don't know what safeguards are needed around advertising," he said. "We don't know how to promote safety elements around that — gambling is a risk-taking behavior and we need to know what safeguards are needed.”