Online sports betting will go live in North Carolina on March 11 as a result of a law that legalized sports betting in the state. This development comes just in time for N.C. bettors to be able to wager on the ACC and NCAA basketball tournaments.

Gov. Roy Cooper signed HB347 in June, allowing anyone over the age of 21 to bet on professional, college and amateur sports and horse racing in the state. Previously, sports betting was only allowed on tribal lands. The bill allows for eight in-person sportsbooks for professional sports, including one at PNC Arena for the Carolina Hurricanes and 12 online sportsbooks that cover all levels of sports.

Jonathan Casper, sport management program coordinator at NC State, said people in North Carolina have participated in online sports betting for years through sportsbooks hosted in states where it is currently legal.

“What is more revolutionary is there’s actually going to be at the stadiums, places where you can place bets,” Casper said. “So there’ll be where you get concessions now, there’ll be an actual sport betting area where you can place wages on who’s gonna win.”

Casper said sports betting could attract new fans to North Carolina sports for the competitive edge it adds to viewership.

“It attracts people to sports that ordinarily maybe aren’t,” Casper said. “So if you’re not really an avid fan of sports, the introduction to betting is a great way to enhance fandom or spectatorship for the sport. So it might appeal to people that have more of a casual interest in the sport to actually attend and go and bet and also be more involved in the actual game itself because they have a stake in the game, literally.” 

Tyler Bailey, a graduate student in the Poole College of Management who is involved with Savage Wolves NIL, said the bill will allow North Carolina to capitalize on the rising popularity of sports betting and curb illegal betting in the state.

“It’s absolutely taking off, not just in North Carolina, but across the entire country,” Bailey said. “And so opening it up for North Carolinians — I think what it will do is it’ll help cut down on the illegal bookies and the illegal betting and the people who are kind of getting away with it and not getting a tax on it.”

Casper said another benefit of HB347 is that the bill appropriates $300,000 annually to 13 smaller college sports programs. Among these are Appalachian State University, East Carolina University and North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University.

“Our athletic program generates revenue from a lot of the spectator sports, but some of the smaller schools, that’s not so much the case,” Casper said. “They don’t have the revenue streams that some of the larger ones do, and this bill actually will benefit some of those programs. So you see a lot of the athletic directors who are struggling budget-wise seeing this as an opportunity to get some free money in many ways.”

The bill also reserves $2 dollars from tax proceeds to the Department of Health and Human Services for gambling addiction education and treatment programs. It pledges another $1 dollars to NC Amateur Sports, which uses a grant to fund youth sports programs across the state.

Bailey said he is most concerned about how sports betting could impact the mental health of student athletes. He said sports betting, in tandem with social media, could ramp up pressure on student athletes through social media messages and bullying.

Bailey said sports betting could also present an opportunity for scandals, referencing Kayshon Boutte, a former Louisiana State University football player who was recently arrested for placing more than 8,900 wagers, with at least six bets involving LSU during his time as a student athlete.

“How are we going to make sure that that doesn’t happen?” Bailey said. “It’s not really an NC State kind of problem to be solved — it’s more ACC and NCAA as a whole. But what can NC State do to mitigate that so that it doesn’t get to the ACC, so that it doesn’t get to the NCAA greater community?”

The NC State Student Athlete Handbook for the year 2022-23 obtained by Technician through a public records request states that student athletes can not wager on any sports in which the NCAA holds championships. Student athletes can not provide information to people involved in organized gambling activities or accept a bet on any team representing the University.

Casper said sports betting becoming more accessible could risk more people developing gambling addictions. He said that even if there are clear favorites in a match-up, there is still room for failure — and losing money.

“It’s 100% gambling,” Casper said. “The one core part about a sport being a sport is that it’s unpredictable. … There’s always the chance that even the most favorite of favorites will lose, and that’s also what makes for fun, too, is that you’re not able to predict it.”

Casper said students could suffer the most from gambling addictions.

“Especially college students don’t have a lot of money,” Casper said. “And if they are betting and losing and getting into financial debt at a young age, that comes with sacrificing other things that might enhance their life and their quality of life as a student.”

Visit the Counseling Center for information regarding gambling and other addictive behaviors.