(WKYT) – As NCAA Tournament brackets are filled out across Kentucky, state lawmakers are pushing to raise the legal sports betting age from 18 to 21 and eliminate prop bets involving college athletes.
Legal sports betting in Kentucky went live in September 2023. Since then, wagering during March has grown by millions of dollars, according to gambling experts. Last year, $82 million was legally wagered in Kentucky during the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, according to Hannah Sims with Kentucky Horse Wagering and Gaming.
Prop bets and player integrity
Beyond bracket pools, bettors can now wager through sportsbook apps on prop bets — wagers tied to individual player performances, such as whether a player will record more than 10 rebounds in a game. The NCAA released a statement in January saying it was investigating 40 student athletes from 20 schools. Eleven were found to have bet on their own performances.
Brad Taylor, who hosts sports talk from a handicapping perspective on ESPN Radio 1300, said the consequences have been severe for some involved.
“There’s people who have gone to prison, there’s people who are going to go to prison because they’ve bet on or against themselves — more often than not against themselves — with these props,” Taylor said.
Age limits and problem gambling
Taylor said younger bettors represent a disproportionate share of problem gamblers in the state.
“The bad gamblers in terms of the problem gamblers in the state — they are the younger crowd,” Taylor said.
David Walls, with the Family Foundation, a Christian public policy organization, said marketing practices are contributing to the problem.
“The reality is the marketing is targeting that demographic — I think there’s no doubt about it — and so that continues to be one of our concerns,” Walls said.
Gambling and sports culture
Walls said the relationship between gambling and sports has shifted in recent years.
“It used to be that we understood that gambling was harmful to sports and there was a separation for that, but now we are promoting that gambling should be intertwined with sports,” Walls said.
Taylor, who has written a book on gambling, noted that the traditional office bracket pool remains a fixture of the tournament season.
“The office pool will always have a place because Marge from accounting taking down that jock that thinks he knows everything about basketball — that’s always going to be a thing,” Taylor said.
For those hoping to hit a perfect bracket, Taylor noted the odds: nine trillion to one.