2026-09-20T09:08:00-0400 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻网
上月，Meta 同意向各州支付171亿美元罚款并做出重大调整，以应对其平台存在成瘾性的指控。佛罗里达律师詹妮弗·赫克斯特拉早已将目光投向了科技巨头遭遇消费者抵制的下一个前沿阵地——体育博彩。
赫克斯特拉曾参与此前针对Meta的法庭胜诉案件，她近期针对美国两家最大的体育博彩应用FanDuel和DraftKings提起了共计15起诉讼。这些案件遵循类似的法律逻辑：博彩应用的设计初衷就是让人成瘾。
“我代理的当事人中，有人因此失去了房子、配偶和孩子，”赫克斯特拉告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻网，“（博彩应用的）运作模式、推送通知都如出一辙，成瘾机制几乎一模一样。”
目前，在线体育博彩人气暴涨——据美国博彩协会数据，去年的投注总额达到1670亿美元——人们对这类博彩带来的经济损失的担忧与日俱增。
加州大学洛杉矶分校今年早些时候发布的一项研究发现，在将在线体育博彩合法化的州，破产案件和信用卡逾期还款率上升了约25%。美国问题赌博委员会的一项调查显示，8%的美国成年人，即近2000万人，称自己在过去一年里“多次”出现至少一项问题赌博行为的指征。
博彩公司正积极应诉，并驳斥有关其助长成瘾行为的说法。美国最大的在线平台FanDuel向哥伦比亚广播公司新闻网表示，“任何声称我们没有积极采取措施监测和遏制问题赌博行为的说法，都是完全错误的。”
拥有约1800万用户的FanDuel表示，该公司去年在负责任博彩方面投入了1.58亿美元，并因用户的赌博行为问题将5700人从平台移除。
哥伦比亚广播公司新闻网的一项调查发现，博彩公司正竭力留住投注者，哪怕用户的亏损不断增加。
“我们与其说是切断他们的投注渠道，不如说是放缓他们的节奏，”一名前FanDuel员工在接受采访时表示，他要求匿名，因为不想危及当前的工作，“这种放缓绝非永久。”
这名博彩公司内部人士称，他共事的一些同事在客户可能投注过度时选择视而不见。
“我和同事们聊过，他们会说，‘我们知道该怎么做，但……我们不想让他们减少投注。’”
VIP特权助力留住投注客
体育博彩应用运用高低科技手段并举的策略，留住客户持续投注。
正如拉斯维加斯赌场曾为高端赌客提供美食大餐和奢华娱乐，如今体育博彩应用也在用豪华包厢体验、签名球衣和独特球迷活动奖励VIP投注者。
埃斯特班·鲁伊斯-海恩斯从未去过职业冰球比赛，直到他开始在体育博彩应用上下注。没过多久，鲁伊斯-海恩斯就坐在了华盛顿首都人队比赛现场，距离得分冠军亚历克斯·奥维奇金仅20英尺，还能漫步在巴尔的摩乌鸦队体育场的场边。
作为弗吉尼亚州中部的一名害虫防治销售员，鲁伊斯-海恩斯表示，他很快就成为了VIP会员，拥有专属的FanDuel经理，会给他发短信告知即将到场观赛的体育赛事信息。这名VIP经理甚至会在他生日时发来祝福。
“就像另一个朋友，”鲁伊斯-海恩斯说道。
鲁伊斯-海恩斯还积攒了一堆FanDuel的礼品——比如华盛顿指挥官队球员签名的头盔，以及NFL职业碗球员签名的球衣。
鲁伊斯-海恩斯在FanDuel的投注金额有多少？他称每年在8万到12万美元之间，差不多相当于他挨家挨户做销售的年收入。
他说，有时他会把周薪全部押在一场看起来胜算大的比赛上。如果赢了，他说感觉像是拿到了双份工资。如果输了，“那我这一周就只能吃拉面了。”
路易斯·鲁杰罗是一名播客主播，也是一名正在康复中的赌博成瘾者，居住在纽约市。他表示，自己在三个月内在FanDuel输掉10万美元后，对方提出让他成为VIP投注者。另外两家博彩公司也向他提供了VIP资格。
“从那一刻起，我不再只是一个客户，我成了被瞄准的目标，”鲁杰罗近期写道。
“奖励越来越丰厚，联系也越来越私人化，亏损也越来越严重，”他说，“我们不妨直言：这根本不是‘VIP待遇’，这是伪装成热情服务的掠夺性客户留存手段。”
数据收集与“多巴胺冲击”
就在博彩公司向高频赌客大肆提供优待的同时，它们也在运作精密的数据系统。
这名前FanDuel员工告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻网，公司能够轻松追踪客户的投注行为——判断赌客的投注是否处于正常范围，或是投注活跃度是否在下降。
“他们的数据收集能力是我在所有工作过的公司中见过的最强之一，”这名内部人士说道。
他还表示，如果赌客暂停投注，公司通常会向他们发送推送通知，试图让他们重新回到赌桌。
赫克斯特拉在诉讼中指控，这些推送通知和奖金提醒最终会在赌客的生活中形成持续存在的氛围，在他们感到无聊、压力大、经济焦虑或情绪脆弱时，引诱他们重新投注。
“这就是多巴胺冲击，”她说。
赫克斯特拉提起的诉讼借鉴了今年3月加州裁决的标志性社交媒体案件的法律理论，她的律所曾协助该案的审理。在该案中，原告律师指控社交媒体公司将一名年轻用户引向了心理健康恶化的歧途。加州陪审团认定Meta和YouTube存在过失，责令两家公司分别支付420万美元和180万美元的赔偿金。
赫克斯特拉表示，该案具有开创性意义，因为原告律师团队——案件于2023年提起时原告年仅17岁——首次提出，社交媒体平台的设计本身就具有成瘾性，并造成了伤害。如今，赫克斯特拉将这一论点应用到了在线博彩平台上。她表示，和社交媒体一样，博彩应用的设计就是为了让用户成瘾。
DraftKings的一名发言人表示，公司无法对未决诉讼置评，但补充道，“公司非常重视负责任的投注参与问题。所有公司员工每年都会接受负责任投注相关培训。”
“我停不下来”
对于像鲁杰罗这样正在康复的赌博成瘾者而言，有关技术设计就是为了让人成瘾的说法听起来真实可信。他说，曾有一段时间他在游戏上下注数万美元。鲁杰罗称，他曾多次尝试戒赌——比如儿子出生的时候。
“我在医院抱着刚出生三个小时的儿子，还在尼克斯队和鹈鹕队的比赛上下了1万美元的注，”他回忆道，“我停不下来。”
“这个东西就是设计出来让你欲罢不能的，”他说。
体育博彩联盟主席乔·马洛伊是一家由博彩公司资助的投注倡导组织的负责人，他表示，鲁杰罗这类案例属于特例，绝大多数投注者都能负责任地进行在线博彩。
“博彩是为了娱乐，不是为了赚钱，”马洛伊说道。
马洛伊表示，在线博彩公司清楚有些投注者在应用上花费了过多时间或金钱，因此公司为投注者提供了一系列负责任博彩工具，帮助他们控制投注。用户可以设置存款限额、投注限额和亏损限额，还有其他多种工具。
“哪怕是那些可能会追分、或是投注时间过长、甚至花费过多个人资金的人，他们也有能力使用这些限额工具，”他说。
如果您或您的亲友需要帮助，全国问题赌博求助热线可提供相关资源。可拨打或发送短信至1-800-MY-RESET，或登录其官网获取更多信息。赌博匿名戒赌协会的全国热线为1-855-222-5542。
阅读FanDuel的完整声明：
“美国在线体育博彩的合法化，将一个由境外运营商、非法赌徒和有组织犯罪掌控的地下产业，转变为一个监管严格、透明、专业且负责任的市场，并设有明确的防护屏障。这也帮助执法部门识别并起诉了犯罪活动，同时通过降低问题赌博的污名化，让更多人意识到赌博成瘾问题，并帮助数千人获得治疗和护理。
“我们认真对待自身责任，以不辜负客户和监管机构对我们的信任。任何声称我们没有积极采取措施监测和遏制问题赌博行为的说法，都是完全错误的。每位FanDuel客户都可以查看其在我们平台上的投注财务信息，并使用一套强大的工具来支持知情且可控的投注，包括存款限额、暂停投注以及只需点击几下即可轻松自我排除的功能。我们的训练有素的专家也会持续审核账户，必要时直接联系客户或采取保护措施，包括设置限额或实施账户排除。去年，我们连同母公司在负责任博彩方面投入了1.58亿美元——加上我们的监测和监管政策，这些努力帮助100万因身份无法验证而无法创建账户的用户被拦截，负责任博彩运营团队完成了5.8万次人工账户审核，并主动将5700人因负责任博彩相关原因从平台移除。”
阅读DraftKings的完整声明：
“尽管DraftKings不会对未决诉讼置评，但公司非常重视负责任的投注参与问题。所有公司员工每年都会接受负责任投注相关培训。DraftKings是美国唯一设有首席负责任博彩官的运营商，该职位直接向首席执行官汇报，并领导着一支由50多名全职员工组成的团队，专注于负责任投注参与。DraftKings开发了独特的专有工具——我的预算构建器和我的数据统计面板，并为客户提供一系列工具，以设置自定义冷却期，并对存款、投注、投注时间和亏损设置限额，帮助客户在自身承受能力范围内投注。负责任投注参与已融入我们的整个业务，是DraftKings长期可持续发展的核心。”
约翰·凯利参与了报道。本报道由杰克·罗森瓦瑟制作。编辑：埃德·吉夫尼什
Sports betting apps prod and entice fans as gambling exacts a growing financial toll
2026-09-20T09:08:00-0400 / CBS News
When Meta agreed last month to pay states $17.1 billion in penalties and make major changes to address claims that its platforms are addictive, attorney Jennifer Hoekstra already had her eyes set on the next frontier in the consumer backlash to Big Tech — sports betting.
Hoekstra, a Florida attorney whose firm was involved in an earlier win in court against Meta, recently filed a series of 15 lawsuits against the two biggest sports gambling apps in the country, FanDuel and DraftKings. The cases follow a similar legal theory: that gambling apps were designed to addict.
“I represent individuals who have essentially lost their houses and their spouses and their kids over this,” Hoekstra told CBS News. “It’s the same type of workflow, the same type of notifications. It’s almost as if it’s the same type of addiction.”
At a time when online sports gambling has exploded in popularity — with the amount wagered reaching $167 billion last year, according to the American Gaming Association — there are mounting concerns about the financial toll of all that betting.
One UCLA study published earlier this year found that in states that legalized sports gambling online, bankruptcies and credit card delinquencies increased about 25%. A survey by the National Council on Problem Gambling found 8% of American adults, almost 20 million people, reported experiencing at least one indicator of problematic gambling behavior “many times” in the past year.
Gaming companies are vigorously fighting the cases, and dispute the notion that they are fueling addictive behavior. FanDuel, the largest online platform, told CBS News that “any claim that we don’t aggressively take actions to monitor and curb problem behavior is completely false.”
FanDuel, which has about 18 million customers, said it invested $158 million on responsible gaming and removed 5,700 people from the platform due to their gambling behavior last year.
A CBS News investigation has found that gaming companies are pushing hard to keep bettors engaged — even in cases where gambling losses are mounting.
“It’s less about cutting them off than slowing them down,” a former FanDuel employee told CBS News, speaking under the condition that he not be identified because he did not want to jeopardize his current job. “It’s never forever.”
The gambling company insider said some of the people he worked with at the company looked away when customers might be betting too much.
“I had conversations with people where they would say, ‘Well, we know what we should do, but … we don’t want to slow them down from placing a bet.”
VIP perks help keep customers betting
Sports gaming apps deploy both low- and high-tech tactics to keep customers betting.
Much as Las Vegas casinos plied high rollers with gourmet meals and lavish entertainment, sports gaming apps are now rewarding VIP bettors with luxury suite access, autographed jerseys and unique fan experiences.
Esteban Ruiz-Haynes had never been to a pro hockey game until he started wagering on sports apps. Before long, Ruiz-Haynes was sitting 20 feet from scoring champ Alex Ovechkin at Washington Capitals games and walking the sidelines at the Baltimore Ravens’ stadium.
A pest control salesman from the middle of Virginia, Ruiz-Haynes said he soon became a VIP member with his own FanDuel manager texting with him about upcoming sporting events to attend. The VIP manager even messages him on his birthday.
“Just another friend,” Ruiz-Haynes said.
Ruiz-Haynes has also amassed a stash of FanDuel gifts — like a signed helmet from a Washington Commanders player and signed jersey from an NFL Pro-Bowler.
How much does Ruiz-Haynes bet with FanDuel? He said anywhere from $80,000 to $120,000 a year, which is about the same as what he earns at work making door-to-door sales.
He says there are times he will wager his weekly paycheck on a single game, if it looks promising. If he wins, he says it’s like he got paid double. And if he loses, “I’m eating ramen noodles for the rest of the week.”
Louis Ruggiero, a podcaster and a recovering gambling addict who lives in New York City, says that after he lost $100,000 on FanDuel in three months, they offered to make him a VIP bettor. Two other gambling companies offered him VIP status as well.
“From that moment forward, I wasn’t just a customer, I was a target,” Ruggiero recently wrote.
“The incentives got bigger. The outreach got more personal. The losses got deeper,” he said. “Let’s call it what it is: This is not ‘VIP treatment.’ This is predatory retention disguised as hospitality.”
Data collection and “the dopamine hit”
At the same time companies lavish attention on prolific gamblers, they are also running sophisticated data operations.
The former FanDuel employee told CBS News the company was easily able to keep tabs on its customers’ betting behavior — detecting if a gambler was betting within a normal range, or if their activity is fading.
“Their data collection is among the best I’ve seen at any company I’ve worked at,” the insider said.
And if bettors took a break, he said, they would often target them with push notifications to try to get them gambling again.
Hoekstra, the lawyer, alleges in the lawsuits she filed that those notifications and bonus alerts eventually create a persistent ambient presence in a gambler’s life, inviting reengagement at moments of boredom, stress, financial anxiety or emotional vulnerability.
“It’s the dopamine hit,” she said.
The lawsuits Hoekstra has filed lean on a similar legal theory to the landmark social media case that was adjudicated in California in March, on which her firm assisted. In that case, the plaintiff’s attorneys alleged social media companies led a young user down a dark path of mental health agitation. A California jury found Meta and YouTube negligent and ordered the companies to pay damages of $4.2 million and $1.8 million respectively.
Hoekstra said the case was novel because the legal team for the plaintiff — who was 17 when the case was filed in 2023 — argued, for the first time, that it was the design of the social media platforms that was addictive and caused the harm. Now Hoekstra is taking that argument and tailoring it to online betting platforms. She says, just like social media, the gambling apps are designed to addict their users.
A DraftKings spokesperson said the company cannot comment on pending litigation, but added that “the company takes responsible engagement concerns very seriously. All company employees are trained on responsible engagement annually.”
“I couldn’t stop”
For recovering gambling addicts like Ruggiero, claims that the technology is designed to addict them ring true. He said he was wagering tens of thousands of dollars on games at one point in his life. Periodically Ruggiero said he would try to stop gambling — like when his son was born.
“I’m in the hospital holding my newborn son, who is three hours old, and I got $10,000 on the Knicks-Pelicans game,” he recalled. “I couldn’t stop.”
“That thing is engineered to keep you going,” he said.
Joe Maloney, the president of the Sports Betting Alliance, a betting advocacy group funded by gambling companies, said cases like Ruggiero’s are outliers and that the vast majority of bettors gamble online responsibly.
“It is for entertainment. It is not for wealth creation,” Maloney said.
Maloney said online gambling companies are aware that some bettors spend too much time or money on their apps, so the companies offer bettors a suite of responsible gaming tools to help them cope. They allow participants to set deposit limits, wager limits and loss limits, among other tools.
“Even those that might have a sense of perhaps chasing losses, or maybe perhaps spending too much time, or even too much of their own money — they have the ability to use these limits,” he said.
If you or a loved one needs help, the National Problem Gambling Helpline offers resources. Call or text 1-800-MY-RESET or get more information on their website. Gamblers Anonymous also has a national hotline at 1-855-222-5542.
Read the full statement from FanDuel:
“The legalization of online sports betting in the United States transformed an industry that operated in the shadows, handled by offshore operators, illegal bookies and organized crime, into a highly regulated, transparent, professional and accountable marketplace with clear guardrails. It has also helped law enforcement identify and prosecute criminal activity and brought awareness to gambling addiction by destigmatizing the problem and connecting thousands of individuals with treatment and care.
“We take seriously our responsibility to operate in a manner that is worthy of the trust our customers and regulators place in us and any claim that we don’t aggressively take actions to monitor and curb problem behavior is completely false. Every FanDuel customer has access to financial information about their play on our site and a robust suite of tools that support informed and controlled play, including deposit limits, timeouts and the ability to easily self-exclude with a few clicks. Accounts are also continuously reviewed by trained specialists who may engage directly with customers or apply protective measures when appropriate, including placing limits or exclusion. Last year we, along with our parent company, invested $158 million on responsible gaming – efforts that along with our monitoring and regulatory policies resulted in one million customers being blocked from creating accounts because their identity could not be verified, 58,000 manual account reviews by our responsible gaming operations team and the proactive removal of 5,700 people from our platform for responsible gaming reasons.”
Read the full statement from DraftKings:
“While DraftKings is not commenting on pending litigation, the company takes responsible engagement concerns very seriously. All company employees are trained on responsible engagement annually. DraftKings is the only U.S. operator with a Chief Responsible Gaming Officer, who reports directly to the CEO and leads a team of more than 50 full-time employees focused on responsible engagement. DraftKings built unique proprietary tools—My Budget Builder and My Stat Sheet—and offers customers a suite of tools to set custom cool-offs and place limits on deposits, wagers, time and losses to help customers play within their means. Responsible engagement is embedded across our business and essential to DraftKings’ long-term sustainability.”
John Kelly contributed reporting. Story produced by Jake Rosenwasser. Editor: Ed Givnish.