Why Hope Will Win the Battle Against Gambling Harm

The massive increase in gaming revenue is inevitably tied to gambling harm. But how do the companies that have become the leaders in the industry respond? Much improvement is necessary.

Look past the wall of multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns and corporate lobbying, and it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the scale of modern gambling. U.S. commercial gaming revenue reached a record $78.7 billion in 2025. Digital sportsbooks are available around the clock in millions of pockets, prediction markets are rapidly expanding access, and helpline contact volume continues to rise. Behind those figures are real people facing debt, hidden anxiety, damaged relationships, and broken trust.

When an issue reaches this magnitude, the instinct is to feel defeated. Yet history shows that when a public health crisis deepens, a quiet but powerful movement emerges alongside it. Beneath the noise of Wall Street expectations and relentless gambling expansion, a wave of compassionate advocates, clinical pioneers, technology innovators, family members, and everyday citizens is forming.

The battle against gambling harm will not be won by corporate slogans or voluntary disclaimers. It will be won because our collective capacity to care can eventually outpace the forces contributing to the harm.

Why Record Results Were Not Enough

To understand why stronger protections and independent recovery resources are so urgently needed, look at what recently happened at the very top of the gambling industry.

Amy Howe left FanDuel in May 2026 after five years as CEO. During her tenure, FanDuel became the leading online sportsbook in the United States, held more than 50 percent market share in several important markets, and established itself as the primary profit engine of the world’s largest online gambling company, Flutter. Under her leadership, FanDuel also took several meaningful responsible gambling positions, including declining to advertise in college stadiums or pursue marketing agreements with college athletes.

FanDuel’s U.S. business generated $922 million in adjusted EBITDA in 2025, an increase of 82 percent over the previous year. Flutter described the business as highly profitable and structurally advantaged, with leadership positions in both sports betting and iGaming. 

Yet less than five months into 2026, Howe was gone.

Three months later, Flutter announced that Group CEO Peter Jackson would also step down. Jackson had led Flutter since 2018, overseeing its transformation into the world’s largest publicly traded online gambling company. In 2025 alone, Flutter produced $16.4 billion in revenue and $2.85 billion in adjusted EBITDA.

The specific circumstances surrounding these departures may differ, and only those directly involved know every factor behind them. But the signal sent to the gambling industry is difficult to ignore:

Last Year’s Record Performance Is This Year’s Minimum Requirement

If leading a company to market dominance, staggering earnings, and record results cannot provide meaningful job security, what lesson will the next generation of executives take from it?

They will not be encouraged to say, “This is enough.”

They will be pressured to find more revenue, higher margins, greater engagement, and longer customer lifetimes. They will be expected to produce continuous growth even when state legalization slows, customer participation softens, or the human cost of that growth becomes increasingly visible.

That pressure does not remain in an executive boardroom. It eventually reaches the smartphone screen of every player.

The Pressure Moves Downstream

Wall Street’s expectation of endless growth can shape the gambling experience in several important ways:

1. Higher Margins: Operators have a financial incentive to promote products with stronger structural margins, including complex same-game parlays, live wagering, and rapid micro-betting.
2. Greater Player Value: Casual bettors placing an occasional $5 wager cannot generate exponential growth. Operators therefore use extensive customer data to identify, retain, and reactivate accounts capable of producing higher betting volume and greater long-term losses.
3. Constant Reengagement: Personalized notifications, deposit incentives, loyalty programs, and VIP treatment can be used to keep high-value players active or bring them back after they stop.
4. Faster Product Expansion: When traditional sports-betting legalization slows, companies look toward iGaming, prediction markets, and other high-frequency products that create additional opportunities to wager.
5. Increased Executive Pressure: When even exceptional leaders are replaced after record-setting performance, future executives understand that maintaining the status quo is not enough. They are expected to extract additional growth from somewhere.

The inevitable question is: Where will that additional growth come from?

It will not come exclusively from millions of brand-new recreational customers placing a few harmless bets each year. A meaningful portion will have to come from existing players betting more frequently, trying more products, and remaining active longer.

That is why players will ultimately bear the consequences of this corporate pressure.

No company needs to deliberately set out to harm someone for harm to occur. It can emerge from a system in which every product decision, performance review, investor call, and executive transition rewards the same outcome: more engagement, more volume, higher margins, and more revenue.

The Mirror Image

The tragedy of modern gambling is that the individual sitting on a couch betting larger and larger amounts can become trapped in a cycle that mirrors the corporation hosting the wager.

The individual may discover that a $10 win no longer creates the same excitement. The wager increases in an attempt to recapture the previous feeling, recover a loss, or escape the emotional consequences of what has already happened.

The corporation faces its own escalation. A record year becomes the new baseline. Nearly $1 billion in U.S. adjusted EBITDA becomes insufficient if the next financial outlook disappoints investors. Market leadership is no longer enough if growth slows. Executives must find new products, new customers, higher margins, and additional reasons for existing players to continue.

For both, the underlying message becomes the same:

It Is Never Enough

The individual can scale wagers until savings, relationships, and emotional stability begin to collapse. The corporation can scale engagement and extraction until regulatory systems, treatment resources, and human lives are placed under intolerable pressure.

The individual and the corporation are not morally equivalent. One is a person who may be struggling with a serious behavioral health condition. The other is a sophisticated commercial enterprise with data, technology, legal teams, and enormous financial resources.

That imbalance is precisely why responsibility cannot be placed entirely on the player.

When both the player and the market are driven toward continuous escalation, the losses will continue to compound unless something interrupts the cycle.

Breaking Through the Isolation

Gambling harm thrives in secrecy. Unlike many other struggles, it often leaves no immediate physical marks. It can remain hidden until financial, emotional, or relational damage reaches a breaking point.

That isolation is finally beginning to fracture. Family members, friends, healthcare professionals, educators, and community leaders are learning how to recognize the warning signs and ask difficult but necessary questions.

A 2026 national survey found that 79 percent of Americans consider gambling addiction as serious as, or more serious than, alcohol or drug addiction. That represents an important shift from shame and personal blame toward public understanding. 

When public perception shifts from judgment to understanding, the path to recovery opens. Every time someone feels safe enough to tell a partner, friend, family member, counselor, or peer, “I am in over my head,” the cycle of harm loses some of its grip.

But we must also recognize that millions of people struggling with gambling harm will not begin by calling a helpline, attending a meeting, or scheduling an appointment with a therapist. Shame, fear, cost, geography, and uncertainty keep far too many people from taking that first step.

If the gambling industry can reach people instantly, privately, and at any hour, support must be capable of doing the same.

A Growing Network of Care

Awareness is the starting point, but the real reason for optimism lies in the growing number of people committed to building solutions:

• Clinical Expansion: Therapists, social workers, counselors, and peer support specialists are developing deeper expertise in gambling addiction and applying evidence-based approaches tailored to each individual.
• Proactive Medical Screening: Healthcare providers are advocating for brief gambling-risk assessments as part of routine care. In the same 2026 national survey, only 15 percent of Americans reported ever being asked about gambling by a primary care provider. That is a significant gap, but it is also an opportunity for earlier intervention.
• Legislative Accountability: Forward-thinking lawmakers are working to dedicate gaming revenue to prevention, research, treatment, and recovery instead of allowing those funds to be redirected elsewhere.
• Universal Self-Exclusion: Advocates are fighting for simpler, multi-operator exclusion systems so individuals do not have to navigate a maze of separate applications to protect themselves.
• Peer Support and Community: Gamblers Anonymous, family support groups, online recovery communities, and people with lived experience are replacing isolation with understanding and connection.
• Responsible Technology: Specialized digital resources are being developed to reach individuals who may never initially contact a traditional support service. Technology cannot replace professional treatment or human connection, but it can provide an immediate bridge toward both.

Exclaim Recovery and Hope are part of this growing movement.

Exclaim Recovery was built from lived experience to provide free, anonymous, nonjudgmental, and stigma-free support for anyone affected by gambling harm. That includes people who are struggling, as well as their families, friends, and loved ones.

At the center of the Exclaim Recovery App is Hope, the world’s first AI Responsible Gambling Assistant. Hope is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no appointment, insurance, or payment required. Someone can begin a private conversation at the exact moment they become ready, even if that moment arrives late at night, on a holiday, or during a period of fear and isolation.

Hope is not a therapist, doctor, crisis service, or replacement for human care. It is a carefully designed bridge. Hope can help someone understand gambling harm, consider practical next steps, prepare for a difficult conversation, find additional resources, or acknowledge for the first time that something needs to change.

Unlike a generic chatbot, Hope was built specifically for gambling harm. It operates within firm safety boundaries, does not provide gambling advice, and has undergone rigorous independent testing by GLI Secure. Its purpose is not to keep someone isolated with technology. Its purpose is to help that person move from secrecy toward understanding, action, community, and appropriate human support.

That should give us optimism.

While gambling companies use increasingly sophisticated technology to increase engagement, compassionate people are using technology to create more opportunities for intervention, support, and recovery.

The Five Pillars of Lasting Recovery

1. Proactive Screening: Healthcare professionals ask about gambling risk during routine care.
2. Accessible Clinical Treatment: Qualified professional help is available without financial or geographic barriers.
3. Universal Blocking: Individuals can exclude themselves from multiple gambling platforms through one coordinated process.
4. Peer Support Networks: Shared experience replaces shame and isolation with understanding and connection.
5. Immediate Digital Support: Specialized resources such as Exclaim Recovery and Hope are available privately and around the clock, helping people take the first step toward additional care and community.

There is no single solution to gambling harm. Clinical treatment alone cannot reach everyone. Neither can helplines, legislation, self-exclusion, peer support, or artificial intelligence.

The reason for optimism is that these resources do not have to compete. They can work together to create more opportunities for people to be reached, understood, protected, and supported.

The Unstoppable Power of Community

No corporate platform, algorithm, or advertising campaign can match the strength of genuine human connection. Peer-led recovery networks such as Gamblers Anonymous, family support groups, and specialized online communities are helping people discover that financial and emotional recovery is possible.

Exclaim Recovery was created in that same spirit. Its foundation is built on three pillars: lived experience, Hope, and community. Hope can provide an immediate starting point, but the larger vision remains deeply human. It is a place where people can learn from one another, support one another, and help shape the resources they wish had existed when they first began struggling.

That is how technology should be used in this space. Not to replace compassion, but to extend its reach. Not to replace therapists or peer support, but to help more people find them. Not to keep someone alone with a machine, but to help that person move from secrecy toward understanding, action, recovery, and human connection.

The road ahead requires relentless effort. We must push elected officials to prioritize treatment infrastructure over short-term tax revenue. We must hold gambling operators accountable for the products they build and the incentives they create. We must give families better tools, expand clinical and peer support, and responsibly use technology to reach people who remain silent.

Changing Fortunes

We must also be honest about what the recent executive changes tell us.

If market leadership, record revenue, and nearly $1 billion in annual U.S. adjusted EBITDA cannot provide security for the people delivering those results, the next leaders will face even greater pressure to find growth wherever it can be found.

Eventually, that pressure reaches the player.

That is why independent resources, public protections, professional care, and recovery communities are no longer optional. They are the necessary counterweight to a commercial system that is structurally incapable of saying, “Enough.”

Most of all, we must remain optimistic.

The story of the current gambling boom will not be written entirely by the companies profiting from it. It will also be written by counselors answering late-night calls, lawmakers fighting for meaningful reform, clinicians expanding access to treatment, advocates demanding accountability, families standing beside their loved ones, and brave individuals stepping forward to reclaim their lives.

It will be written by people who refuse to accept that suffering in isolation is inevitable.

And it will be strengthened by resources such as Exclaim Recovery and Hope, created to ensure that whenever someone becomes ready to reach out, whether at noon or three in the morning, a safe first step is available.

The crisis is real. The commercial pressure will continue. The consequences for players cannot be ignored.

But the human capacity to care, innovate, connect, heal, and rebuild is stronger.

That is why Hope will win.

Dan Real is a 30-year gambling industry veteran who is best known for identifying and developing many of the industry’s top executive level talent. A lifelong gambler himself, he has committed a tremendous amount of time and personal resources to help individuals who struggle with gambling harm. You can check out his App, Exclaim Recovery, on the Apple App Store or Google Play. The App features Hope, the world’s first and only AI RG/PG assistant. You always have Hope!