Earlier this month, Baltimore The lawsuit has been announced Against Draftkings, the parent company of two largest sportsbooks in the United States, Flutter and Fanduel. The lawsuit accuses of exploiting vulnerable Baltimore residents to businesses, attacking them with deceptive bonus offers, and cultivating problematic gambling to pursue profits.
The complaint could represent the first lawsuit brought by the city government against a gambling company for the exploitation of its residents. Just as lawmakers and public health advocates consider ways to make sports betting safer, the lawsuit from major cities may have cracked the code in a new way to hold sports betting companies accountable.
Baltimore’s allegations against Fanduel and Draftkings reflect an increase in evidence regarding the predatory design of legal sports betting. The survey states legalising online sports betting in the state. Declining financial health For residents including Reduced savings For low-income households.
Meanwhile, constant ads, aggressive promotional offers and a seamless app interface have transformed professional and university sports into on-ramps of gambling addiction, especially for young men.
“Everyone under the age of 25, they’re looking,” a former Funde-El employee told me about their old company. Polls find it too African Americans may have an online sportsbook account and bet multiple times a week, and use sportsbook sign-up promotions.
The new lawsuit is not the first attempt to hold Draft King and Fan Duell liable in court. Northeastern University’s Public Health Advocacy Group submitted Class Action Litigation Several former gamblers have been involved in DraftKings over Massachusetts’ deceptive ads bring the action The New Jersey company is a company around predatory practices, including a VIP program aimed at large-capacity bettors.
It should not be for individuals or even advocates to make a sportsbook change behavior. Fanduel and Draftkings are sportsbooks that, as they often boast, take responsibility for regulators and raise state tax revenues. However, this arrangement has left the state government in custody. How do you increase income from losses while protecting residents from gambling harm?
This question describes the obstacles from previous conditions. This is an obvious candidate for putting closer clamps on sports betting. Various weapons from the state government have been charged with ensuring profitability as well as regulating gambling. One of five Official purpose Maryland’s lottery and game control agency is to “support state governments and legitimate causes by maximizing the contributions of sports betting.”
However, these contributions aren’t as great as Sportsbook makes you believe. Sports gambling has always been a low margin business. In Maryland, sportsbooks pay 20% tax on profits (after small increase This tax rate was adopted last month. Still, it’s not just a major money supervision. Between December 2021 and the end of February 2025, Maryland was totally combined. $154 million Tax revenue from sports betting. For reference, the state lottery was raised $1.58 billion For profits in 2023 alone (over 10 times). Total state income of that year $61 billion.
No matter how little money is in the state budget’s grand scheme, gambling represents an unusual source of income that doesn’t require new taxes. State lawmakers across the country have embraced a variety of forms of gambling over the past decades in the hopes of presenting a painless solution to budget challenges that are difficult to earn.
When it comes to gambling, cities have different calculations. Maryland Sports Betting Revenue supports public education programs. Some of that, of course, will be useful to Baltimore students. However, when it comes to statewide businesses such as lottery and sports betting, cities don’t directly benefit from gambling revenues like state governments (Law Office in Baltimore) Confirmed by ESPN The city does not receive direct income from sports betting.
As a result, cities only see the benefits of gambling indirectly, but they can see the harms associated with them directly. And these harms have great social and financial costs. Gambling addiction has the highest suicide rate of all addictions, and cities often pay some of the law enforcement and judicial costs associated with gambling addiction, from bankruptcy to theft. Domestic violence.
The court works slowly, and in the case of Baltimore – if the city circuit court allows it to move forward, it may take years to settle. However, sports betting needs to be safer, and cities may be just the right challenger for the sports bet boom. Sportsbooks are forced to rethink some of their more aggressive practices, especially if other cities submit their own complaints.
Regardless of their legal success, such suits will send a message about the need for a better guardrail on gambling and the role of local governments in restraining national reckless bets on sports betting.
Jonathan D. Cohen is the author of “Big Big: America’s Reckless Bets on Sports Gambling” (2025).
