How the quick high of ‘fast-food gambling’ ensnared young men

Betting companies are making huge amounts from the confidence of young, male customers who think they can beat the system

Watching televised sports in 2025 can feel a little like sitting through one long gambling commercial, interspersed by occasional flashes of actual games. Those sports, meanwhile, are played in venues and uniforms plastered with the logos of yet more betting houses, airing on broadcasts that sprinkle in mentions of gambling sponsors.

The experience on sports podcasts and websites and apps is much the same. But why? As the biggest event on the US sports calendar - the Super Bowl - approaches, how did we get to a place where sports have been reduced to a kind of raw material to be refined and packaged into the real product: the no-sweat, profit-boosted, five-leg, in-game parlay bonus bet?