Is it Time for an Institutional Review Board for Gambling Advertising?

In 1979, the U.S. government released the Belmont Report, a foundational document introducing ethical standards for research involving human subjects. It was created in response to serious abuses by the research community (the Tuskegee Syphilis Study is perhaps the most well-known, but see also this article detailing human plutonium injection experiments, as well as the Stanford Prison Experiment for other examples) and aims to ensure that research abides by three core principles: Respect for Persons, Beneficence, and Justice. These principles are implemented through the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process, which mandates that any academic or federally funded study involving human participants must be submitted for independent review. The IRB ensures minimization of risks, protection of vulnerable populations, and that participants give informed consent.

I myself had the occasion to engage with this process nearly a decade ago as a faculty member of the Desert Research Institute while conducting research into gambling attitudes and impacts in Nevada tribal communities.  Despite the fact that this research essentially involved only a relatively simple voluntary survey completed in the context of a community-based outreach dinner, in order to receive IRB approval to proceed I needed to consider several factors.  These included identifying the ways that the project and survey could potentially cause harm to those who decided to participate, detailing how I would mitigate these potential harms, and ensuring that the potential benefits of participation, both current and future, would outweigh the potential risks and harms experienced by participants.

When it comes to the gambling industry, as is true for the entire commercial sector generally, there is another kind of “experiment” that is always being conducted: marketing.  Specifically, advertising associated with attracting, engaging, and retaining customers. An advertisement is developed and distributed, and if the target demographic engages more frequently with and spends more money on the product, the “experiment” is deemed a success.  There are comprehensive federal regulations governing how other legal, regulated, but potentially addictive products are advertised (e.g., alcohol and cigarettes), including prohibitions on how, when, and if broadcast advertising is allowed, as well as prohibitions against deceptive advertising. Unfortunately, no such federal regulations currently exist for how gambling products are marketed and advertised.  One legislative proposal trying to address some of these harms is the SAFE Bet Act (S.1033 / H.R.2087), reintroduced in 2025. Among other things, it would limit how sports betting advertising is done, potentially banning ads during live game broadcasts or between certain hours, banning language like “bonus bet” that can be misleading, and requiring disclosures about gambling addiction resources.

While industry advocacy organizations such as the American Gaming Association (AGA) provide guidance on how gambling should or should not be advertised by its members, these are expectations outlined in a Code of Conduct that has nothing approaching the teeth of a federal  regulatory standard. Certainly, there no requirements or expectations of a process to internally or externally vet advertising campaigns prior to their implementation.  Anecdotally, a couple gambling licensees I have spoken with say that their RG “team” is able to review and comment on campaigns prior to their release, but this is far from a regular industry practice, with a marketing departments completely siloed from RG teams or personnel a much more common scenario.

Marketing as Behavioral Experimentation in the Gambling Industry

Concurrent with the recent rapid expansion of legal sports betting across the country, many operators have engaged in a feeding frenzy to capture market share, sometimes spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the effort. Marketing practices have increasingly resembled behavioral experiments:

• Attempts to form relationships with colleges and sports franchises, with the likely effect of significant indirect marketing to student bodies who are, in most locations, under the legal age for betting, as well as the exposure of children and adolescents to significant gambling advertising while attending or watching games remotely;

• Misleading advertising around bonus offers (“sign‑up bonuses,” “no‑sweat bets,” etc.), where the conditions are opaque or designed to encourage overuse;

• Use of celebrities and influencers who glamorize betting, often reaching and at least indirectly impacting particularly vulnerable young audiences;

• A glut of advertising during games themselves—prime time for families, including children, gathered around the television to cheer on their favorite teams.

Children are becoming more and more exposed to gambling-related advertising, not only within broadcasts, but also within the online environments they may frequent, and parents are often ill equipped to talk with their children meaningfully about why gambling of any kind should be delayed until adulthood. The normalization of betting via sports broadcasts in particular makes it difficult for young people to see it as anything but part of the fun.

Given the above, here are some suggestions that would signal that the industry cares about people, not only profits:

1. • Adopt an IRB‑like review process for marketing campaigns (especially those that could inadvertently target vulnerable populations: youth, people with gambling problems, etc.), just as academic research is vetted.
2. • Don’t wait for the regulatory framework to arrive…implement a self-ban on gambling ads during and immediately prior to game broadcasts when children and families are most likely watching.
3. • Invest in equal time for evidence-based RG messages in advertising: encourage or require stand-alone ads that are focused messages about responsible gambling, addiction help, etc., rather than an often barely-legible helpline number appearing only in promotional content.
4. • Incentivize engagement with RG tools in marketing: Reward and highlight use of personal limit and self-exclusion tools, and if that reward is a cash credit in one’s account, don’t require them to gamble the reward in order to cash it out. Use some of the exact same incentives that are already known to drive people to the gambling side of the application.
5. • Fund more independent research on what works in RG messaging and tools. Currently, industry has a stranglehold on the amount of funding available for such studies, and while there are some good firewalls in place between industry contributions and the research that scientists carry out, even knowledge of source funding has the potential to introduce bias into results. Until sufficient federal funding exists (e.g. via legislation such as the GRIT Act), progress will likely remain slow.

Why an IRB process for Advertising Makes Sense

The Belmont Report’s commitment to protecting vulnerable populations remains deeply relevant to this discussion. As Richard Schuetz expressed recently, and very eloquently, the gambling industry very often knows who many of their most vulnerable customers are.  Marketing practices in gambling can have the effect of exploiting psychological vulnerabilities that may initially express themselves in changes in gambling behavior.  These changes are sometimes observable in the data being collected for individuals, and the danger of simply using these data to market a higher spend back to the individual can create a feedback loop if the change in behavior is not simply a function of the person’s change in affordability.

It’s time for ethical consistency. If academic research must get IRB oversight when it has the potential to result in harmful impacts on human behaviors or general health, why shouldn’t advertising of regulated products that are known to be potentially addictive be held to similar ethical standards?  Even an internal process that provides for the specific involvement and input of an organization’s RG team in vetting company marketing and advertising strategies before they are implemented would go a long way towards breaking down some of the silos that now exist in most operators in these areas.  I suspect that some of the now-discarded strategies such as sports betting operators partnering directly with universities never would have seen the light of day had such discussions or processes been in place to begin with.

On the other side of the advertising discussion, there needs to be more focus on how to successfully market and engage individuals from across the gambling spectrum in awareness and use of RG features, not just those who have begun to experience harm (assuming that such features are even available, which in many markets is still a questionable proposition). This requires a continuous dedicated and long-term funding stream that will enable studies across multiple geographic, demographic, and operator variables.  Unfortunately, the industry currently has a stranglehold over what funding is available for these types of research. Until there is robust federal support (e.g. via the GRIT Act), and the passage of meaningful regulatory guardrails (such as those in the SAFE Bet Act), change will continue to be slow. Nevertheless, we need not wait for those things to happen to recognize that they are the right things to do, and act accordingly.  People’s lives, livelihoods, and families are at stake, as is the long-term sustainability of the regulated industry itself.

Ted Hartwell has been in recovery from a gambling addiction for over 18 years. He has recently stepped back from his role as executive director of the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling to become its director of storytelling and development. He serves as a public spokesperson for the organization and engages with key stakeholders at the local, state, and national level on all issues related to problem gambling. His current focus is on connecting rural and tribal communities in the state to problem gambling information and treatment. He has served on the Nevada Advisory Committee on Problem Gambling since 2013, and in 2014 he received the prestigious Shannon L. Bybee Award for Advocacy, presented by the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling for his many advocacy, consulting, and research efforts with the Council, the Problem Gambling Center and Lanie’s Hope. He served on the Board of Directors for the National Council on Problem Gambling from 2021-2024. Prior to his work with the Council, he served on the research faculty of the Desert Research Institute for 32 years.