Why It Matters
Massachusetts is one of the first states to systematically bring gambling addiction education into public schools, responding to a sharp rise in youth sports betting following a 2018 Supreme Court ruling that opened the door for widespread legal wagering across the country. The effort comes as research shows roughly one in three boys between the ages of 11 and 17 gambled in the past year, according to a Common Sense Media survey.
What Happened
Pete Hall, a 40-year-old health and physical education teacher at Central High School in Springfield, ran a four-day gambling prevention unit with his students in April. Hall draws on personal experience — his own betting escalated from $5 to $10 wagers into bets of $5,000 to $10,000, eventually leading him to seek help through Gamblers Anonymous. “I don’t want to scare people. I just want to inform,” he said.
Central High is part of a broader pilot program now in its second year, coordinated through the Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health. The curriculum, designed for students ages 12 to 20, runs four sessions of 45 minutes each and covers warning signs of problem gambling, the mechanics of odds, and the gap between how gambling is marketed and how it actually works. Health teacher Melanie Dzioba, also at Central High, points to the imbalance in messaging: “Have we ever heard a betting ad say, ‘You can lose all your money if you do this?’ No.”
The program notes that high-profile celebrities — including comedian Kevin Hart in DraftKings commercials and model Kendall Jenner promoting Fanatics Sportsbook — regularly appear in betting advertisements that young people encounter. Prediction market platforms like Kalshi have also expanded their visibility among younger audiences.
By the Numbers
In the spring 2025 pilot phase, 445 students across five high schools and three community organizations completed the curriculum. Post-program surveys found that 70 percent of participants could identify warning signs of problem gambling, 64 percent said they intended to wait until the legal age to place a sports wager, and 78 percent would recommend the program to a friend.
The program then expanded significantly — reaching 2,000 students at 15 high schools and another 200 students across five middle schools during the same spring 2025 period. Massachusetts sets the legal age for sports betting at 21, while lottery tickets and prediction market platforms carry a minimum age of 18.
Sports betting became legal in Massachusetts in 2023, part of a broader national wave following a Supreme Court decision in 2018 that struck down a federal law barring most states from authorizing sports wagering. Today, 39 states and the District of Columbia permit some form of legal sports betting.
Zoom Out
Massachusetts is not acting alone. Virginia and North Carolina are also piloting school-based gambling education programs aimed at youth. At the state government level, the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General assembled a Youth Sports Betting Safety Coalition in 2024, which includes major Boston professional sports franchises — the Red Sox, Bruins, and Celtics — as participating partners.
The youth gambling issue mirrors earlier debates over how schools should address alcohol, tobacco, and opioid use among adolescents. Advocates for the program argue that normalization of sports betting through mainstream advertising and celebrity endorsements has accelerated the timeline for when young people first encounter and experiment with wagering.
What’s Next
The Massachusetts program is expected to continue expanding into more schools, with middle school outreach now formally included in the rollout. Shekinah Hoffman, director of programs and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging at the Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health, oversees the curriculum’s development and implementation as reach grows. Whether the state legislature will consider any additional regulatory guardrails around youth gambling advertising remains an open question, as the coalition and education program build their track record.
Proponents say the goal is prevention through information rather than prohibition — teaching students to recognize the structural risks in gambling before they are of legal age to participate, while equipping them to make more deliberate decisions once they are.