Earlier this year, during the college basketball event known as March Madness, the biggest sports gambling apps were lighting up Eden Iscil’s phone with notifications. From sunrise to late evening, they kept inviting him to wager on games, players, and teams.
But the apps didn’t know that Iscil wasn’t actually interested in placing bets or winning money. In fact, Iscil isn’t a “sports person” and had never gambled on sports before downloading the FanDuel, DraftKings, and BetMGM apps.
Instead, Iscil was conducting research about sports gambling app notifications in his role as the senior public policy manager for the National Consumers League.
That research led the nonprofit organization to recommend a ban on sports betting advertising, particularly via push notifications. Iscil’s own advice to gamblers? Turn off those notifications whenever possible.
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Iscil made that conclusion after spending a few weeks on the frontlines of online sports gambling, learning firsthand what millions of Americans have already experienced: Sportsbooks can now reach customers anywhere with marketing messages designed to reel them in, using notifications tailored to their betting preferences.
“That’s just another level of access these gambling companies didn’t have previously,” Iscil says, noting that people typically placed their wagers at casinos or sportsbooks prior to the nationwide legalization of online gambling in 2018. Sports betting revenue reached $13.7 billion dollars in 2024, according to the American Gaming Association.
While push notifications may be standard business practice these days, experts say they encourage people to spend more time and money gambling than they otherwise would, similar to other aspects of gambling app design. A lawsuit filed this year by the city of Baltimore alleges that both FanDuel and DraftKings use “systematically designed and deployed” notifications and promotions to target users and keep them spending.
“The platforms are designed to create disordered gamblers and then exploit them,” the lawsuit alleged. DraftKings declined to comment on ongoing litigation. A spokesperson for FanDuel said the company also wouldn’t comment on pending litigation but added that it “operates in accordance with all laws.”
With over two-thirds of U.S. states allowing online sports betting, such apps are becoming ubiquitous. According to a recent poll by the Siena College Research Institute and St. Bonaventure University’s Jandoli School of Communication, nearly a quarter of Americans, and 48 percent of American men aged 18-49, have an account with at least one online sportsbook.
Potential risks of gambling notifications
Iscil told Mashable that each app he tested quickly reflected his supposed personal interests once he began betting.
He received separate notifications reminding him of the odds of betting on NBA star LeBron James as well as March Madness favorites like the Houston Cougars and Tennessee Volunteers, for example. One “March Mania” all-caps text message paired candy and money bag emojis with an invitation to bet using a specific promotion to receive an odds boost. That was sent at 1:30 p.m. Eastern on a Sunday afternoon in March.
Push notifications, or the pop-up messages sent directly to consumers outside of the app, can be a highly effective way to capture a user’s attention with timely deals, discounts, and other promotions.
That may delight the consumer who receives a coupon from a coffee chain just as they were considering an afternoon caffeine fix. But when it comes to online gambling, preliminary research suggests that notifications could lead to impulsive decision-making and increased betting frequency and expenditures.
Dr. Philip Newall, who studies gambling psychology as a lecturer at the University of Bristol, has looked at so-called “dark patterns,” or the ways online gambling companies use various levers to manipulate gambler behavior, like making it harder for consumers to set sensible deposit limits and prominently placing “reverse withdrawal” buttons in an app to encourage consumers to bet with winnings they intended to transfer into their bank account.
Newall argues that such engagement strategies have reached an unprecedented level because consumers can now bet instantaneously by phone.
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In general, people who experience addiction are more vulnerable to noticing related cues, such as advertising, which then fuel their urge to engage in risky behavior. Even viewing ads about the risks of gambling can increase the desire to place a bet, Newall says.
Navigating notifications on gambling apps
Iscil discovered that dealing with sports betting notifications isn’t simple or straightforward.
Over the four-week research period, he received 93 notifications on a phone used to place a total of 12 bets. Ninety-five percent of those messages contained advertising to bet. The highest number of notifications arrived during the lunch and dinner hours, between 12 and 2 p.m. and 4 and 7 p.m., respectively.
Iscil’s colleague used a separate phone to download the same apps but didn’t make any wagers. That phone received just 15 notifications over the same time period.
Iscil cautions against averaging out the notifications based on the total number of days spent on the research. He and his colleague placed no bets during the first and fourth weeks of their testing, and the notifications increased and decreased accordingly. Iscil acknowledges that the absence of bets at the beginning and end of the month duration is a limitation of their research.
In Iscil’s experience, FanDuel automatically gave itself permission to send notifications to his phone. When BetMGM requested permission from Iscil to send notifications, the platform didn’t disclose that it would deliver advertisements for gambling. Though DraftKings asked for Iscil’s consent, specifying that it would send exclusive offers and promotions, Iscil felt it didn’t make clear that nearly all of its notifications would be marketing.
BetMGM did not respond to requests for comment. DraftKings declined to comment specifically on Iscil’s findings, but it appears the company introduced a new push toggle to turn off marketing notifications since the publication of his report. Mashable reviewed before-and-after screenshots of the app’s settings to confirm the new option. According to the company, DraftKings is required by state regulations to offer opt-out mechanisms for all marketing communications, and it says it fully complies with those requirements.
A FanDuel spokesperson told Mashable that when customers download the app they are currently given the option to either enable push notifications or skip them for the time being. The latter setting silently sends messages to the notification center instead of presenting them as banners or on a locked screen.
The spokesperson added that customers are able to opt-out of marketing messages via their account settings, by unchecking the box for “marketing” under “email preferences.” On the FanDuel app, that acts as an opt-out for all marketing communications, including push notifications.
When Iscil published his report, he noted that each of the apps’ iPhone settings allowed a blanket opt-out from all notifications instead of letting consumers skip only marketing messages. Federal law requires businesses to give consumers the option to turn off marketing messages sent via email but keep them for security alerts. There are not yet similar regulations for push notifications, according to Iscil.
The American Gaming Association, which represents industry members like DraftKings and FanDuel, declined to comment on Iscil’s findings. The AGA’s code of conduct governing advertising and marketing produced by its members states that such messaging shouldn’t “represent saturation of that medium or become excessive.”
How to deal with gambling notifications
Consumers who feel the urge to gamble should turn off online betting app push notifications, says Jaime Costello, director of programs for the National Council on Problem Gambling.
If an app knows a consumer’s betting preferences and frequently pitches related wagers via push notifications, the dynamic can quickly become risky, she says.
“I think that personalization paired with those triggers is what really increases that risk,” Costello says, referring to the development of addictive behavior.
“I think that personalization paired with those triggers is what really increases that risk.”
– Jaime Costello, National Council on Problem Gambling
Beyond turning off notifications, Costello recommends batching them to read once a day as well as unsubscribing from email marketing messages and using app-based limits that restrict time and money spent during specific periods.
It’s important for consumers to generally track and reflect on their wins and losses, Costello adds. Developing the ability to notice moments of overwhelm or excitement that lead to impulsive choices can help people better manage their gambling habits.
Yet Costello also believes that gambling operators play a key role by creating products that allow consumers to control what is sent to them. She argues that consumers should always opt-in to marketing messages than be required to opt-out.
She suggests that gambling apps should use the same opt-in approach for push notifications as they do for email marketing, even if federal law doesn’t require it.
As Costello sees it, the stakes are too high to send notifications that encourage gambling if the person receiving them is already vulnerable.
“Yes, it can be a form of entertainment, but for some people, it has devastating effects,” Costello says.
If you or someone you know is struggling with gambling, help is available 24/7 through the National Problem Gambling Helpline. Connect with a trained professional who can guide you to local resources by calling 1-800-522-4700, texting 800GAM, or chatting online at https://www.ncpgambling.org/chat.
