FINDING
THE LINE
The arguments around college
sports betting laws in Connecticut
Connecticut State Rep. Tony Scott is the first to admit that he is an avid sports bettor. He views gambling on sports as a form of entertainment, like going to the movies or having dinner at a nice restaurant. Playing daily fantasy for pro golf and F1 racing are some of his favorite pastimes.
“I’d rather sit there and watch a two-hour basketball game and have a chance to win 50 bucks,” said the Republican from Monroe. “If I go to a restaurant, I’m not getting that 50 bucks back. It’s gone. At least I have a chance to get some entertainment and actually make some money.”
The third-term state representative of District 112 has made himself an advocate in Hartford for the sports betting industry. He proposed multiple betting-related bills to the Connecticut House in January, including one that would have allowed residents to wager on in-state NCAA teams during the regular season. While his motivations are admittedly quite personal, Scott says that expanding the legal betting market is the best financial move for bettors, sportsbooks and the state alike.
Shortly after his election to the general assembly, Scott used his knowledge as a consumer to act, in his words, as a “dictionary” behind the scenes to help his colleagues draft the legislation for Connecticut’s betting legalization bill for pro sports in October of 2021.
“Bringing that ‘shadiness’ out into the public and be able to have the chance to really kind of legislate and make sure it’s done right,” said Scott. “People are going to bet with or without it being public. So let’s bring it legal. Let’s make sure we’re protecting those consumers and make sure they’re not getting taken advantage of."
Source: Connecticut General Assembly
Source: Connecticut General Assembly
Current laws only allow betting on NCAA tournament results, like March Madness or the Frozen Four. Even then, residents can not place bets on the individual games themselves - just the tournament results as a whole. Legislators wanted to place limitations on college sports to protect players and prevent game-fixing schemes.
That has not stopped dedicated gamblers, though. Scott says he knows many people who travel across state lines to wager on their favorite schools. Though he could not provide an exact figure, he claims that the current restrictions cause Connecticut to miss out on significant tax revenue.
A Betting Eruption
Sports betting has gone from taboo to the forefront of the American sports market over the past half-decade. Sponsored betting content has become commonplace on both national and regional sports outlets. Flip on any broadcast and it seems like betting odds and parlays are referenced just as much as the game itself. Networks have been getting into bed with the sportsbook industry as well. ESPN launched its own sportsbook called ESPNBet in 2023. In 2024, FanDuel bought the naming rights to what used to be Bally Sports, a regional sports network for 30 professional teams. Fanatics launched its' own sportsbook that year as well.
“By 2021, when it came to Connecticut, having the pent-up market made it natural,” said Donald Tutson Jr, a Quinnipiac adjunct professor and attorney who specializes in sports issues. “I think that younger people, with accessibility to the internet and to funds instantly, that sort of is the perfect storm for this particular market.”
State-by-state college sports betting laws in the US
State-by-state college sports betting laws in the US
Thirty-nine states now allow sports betting in some form. Thirty-seven states allow betting on college sports as a whole and 23 allow betting on in-state NCAA teams. Even with the restrictions in Connecticut, business is booming for sportsbooks. According to data published by the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection, gamblers have wagered over $45 billion on sports in the state since legalization.
The house has been winning too, by about $1.8 billion over that same period. Annual betting losses blew past the half-billion mark in 2024 and bettor losses have increased year-over-year. The Department of Consumer Protection also says that sports bettors in the state on average only win 89 cents for each dollar they bet. This does not even account for on-site sports bets placed at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, which do not have to report their revenue data to the state because of their tribal nation tax exemptions.
Source: Conn. Department for Consumer Protection
Source: Conn. Department for Consumer Protection
The state has been winning, too. Connecticut generated $98 million in tax revenue from sports betting last year alone and has also seen yearly revenue increases since 2021.
Source: Conn. Department for Consumer Protection
Source: Conn. Department for Consumer Protection
According to polls, legalizing betting on college teams is a split issue. A February survey by The Associated Press found that 55% of the public is against legalized betting on college sports. However, Scott says he believes that support is much higher in Connecticut.
“I think the people want it and I think there are millions of dollars being left on the table,” Scott said.
Source: The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research
Source: The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research
More gambling increases the risk of addiction, though. Just this year, a poll from the Siena College Research Institute found that 20% of bettors have had trouble making ends meet because of a gambling loss and around one-third say they know somebody with an online gambling problem. Additionally, 52% say that they try to make up for their gambling losses with even bigger bets, a practice known as "chasing".
Scott says that consumer protection is a key goal of his, but according to Tutson, more legal betting avenues could lead to more people getting sucked into a cycle they cannot afford.
“The boomerang effect of the mental health and financial strain is going to be a big problem, not just in Connecticut, but around the nation,” said Tutson. “Connecticut, at least, has been a little forward-thinking, relatively speaking, with the Department of Consumer Protection setting up dedicated services and assets to deal with that.”
Tutson said that he believes the best course of action for the state is to get ahead on the issue as betting continues to increase.
“I don’t know how many people actually use those services right now, because anybody who, I think, is addicted or having potential mental health issues isn’t far enough down the road yet,” he added. “But I think those numbers are going to start growing exponentially and I’m very concerned about that.”
So what does that mean for Connecticut?
An Issue In Limbo
Scott said legalizing betting on collegiate teams will not happen this year. He does not expect his bill to make it out of the general law committee.
"That bill has died," he bluntly put it. "It is not going to move forward as we speak."
Scott said that some of his other proposals, such as bills to allow bet opt-outs and maximum wager limits to help protect consumers, are moving forward. He says that pressure from universities and uneasiness from some of his colleagues did the bill in.
“I understand the why… I need to get everyone more comfortable with the idea,” Scott said. “A lot of these general law folks are new to sports gambling… they don’t want to make any drastic changes right away.”
According to Scott, sportsbooks and casinos are the biggest lobbying groups for expanded legalization. The NCAA and universities have been the most prominent voices against it. Jed Parker, the associate athletic director of compliance at Quinnipiac, thinks legalizing college gambling is a slippery slope.
“Sports wagering is like priority 1-A. It is insane, the emphasis that the NCAA has placed on sports wagering education and protections since Charlie Baker became president of the NCAA,” said Parker. “The NCAA is tracking over 90% of bets being placed in America between individuals 18-to-25… So they’re tracking everything with student-athletes to ensure that they’re not betting on their own games, but they’re also trying to create health and wellness programs to counsel, to advise and to help.”
Athlete betting is an issue that’s been in the news a lot. In February, four members of the University of New Orleans men’s basketball team were suspended as a part of an NCAA gambling probe. Other programs like North Carolina A&T, Mississippi Valley State and Eastern Michigan were tied to a separate federal probe investigating ex-NBA player Jontay Porter’s alleged gambling ring. Porter was banned from the NBA for life in 2024 and is facing federal charges after he bet on his own games while with the Toronto Raptors. Sportsbooks also track wagers rigorously and will shut down any suspicious betting activity they see, according to Scott.
Parker says that the student-athlete handbook has a policy for gambling and that educating student-athletes about sports wagering is a part of the department’s compliance meetings with players.
“In my experience, it’s better to be hands-on than hands-off,” Parker said. “So many people live or die by sports betting right now. It’s real, it’s very passionate and the cat’s out of the bag… In my opinion, there just has to be some form of protection for student-athletes.”
Another big concern from the university perspective is the effects on athlete mental health. Parker said that the department’s sports psychologist, Devin Markle, is one of the most important assets the department has. Still, sports information directors at Quinnipiac who run team social media accounts said that they have had to be more alert in moderating team-related content when dejected bettors leave nasty comments. The comments can be so vile at times that they have to be reported and taken down.
“We should not be in a world where we have to delete comments or make posts non-commentable because of the comments that athletes are then seeing,” Parker said. “You can’t tell me that’s not in the back of an athlete’s mind when they go on and they see ‘Expletive, expletive, expletive’ at you. That hurts.”
Parker doesn’t see this issue going away anytime soon. He thinks that betting on sports should be reserved for the professional ranks.
“That’s good to me that it didn’t go through in Connecticut, but that does not mean that people still aren’t placing bets on them,” he said. “I don’t know how you get that genie back in the bottle, but whatever protections there can be, we should have them for college sports, in my opinion.”
On campus at Quinnipiac, 60% of respondents to an on-campus survey conducted for this piece supported legalizing college betting in the state.
As a whole, college students make up a large chunk of the betting market. Around 58% of 18-to-22-year-olds have placed bets on sports and college students who live on campus bet at a 67% rate according to a 2023 report from the NCAA. Here's what some students on campus at Quinnipiac said about the issue:
“Professional athletes get hazed and harassed all the time. We don’t need the student section of the Bobcats screaming at Amarri Monroe about their parlays... Second, I think it’s morally wrong to profit off college kids.”
“College sports have a pretty big fanbase. Especially college students themselves, some of them being legal age to gamble... I think it would be a good idea to expand it.”
“I think it would have been beneficial. Being able to bet on Quinnipiac hockey the past couple of years would have been nice... Being able to bet on your favorite team is also really fun.”
“I don't see a problem with it, as long as there are the same rules we hold other sports betting things to. But I could see how it could get hairy because we'd probably expose younger people to gambling.”
"You're just incentivizing more attacks on college athletes. The brain doesn't fully develop until 25 and getting that kind of attack as an 18, 19 year old online... all that can really damage someone's psyche."
Scott said he plans to have additional conversations with school athletic directors and the sportsbooks to try to find a compromise. He plans to reintroduce a revised proposal sometime in the next two years.
“I think it’s a conversation that everyone wants to keep on having,” Scott said.
