March Madness Again, Biggest Gambling Event

March Madness gambling is projected to reach $3.1 billion this year, a 15% increase from 2024, creating devastating financial and personal consequences for individuals and the economy.

• Gambling is not entertainment—it's an addictive product more dangerous than heroin
• Legal betting continues to increase while offshore illegal betting is estimated to be four times higher
• The lie that gambling can be done "responsibly" is pushed by industry-affiliated recovery professionals
• Gambling creates physical tension, anxiety, and stress throughout the entire betting process
• The money flowing into gambling operations affects household spending and economic activity
• Gambling addiction remains hidden until financial catastrophe like eviction or repossession looms
• Legalized gambling does not bring integrity to sports—it increases manipulation and corruption
• Simply watching games without betting leads to greater enjoyment without the negative emotions

Join our Recovery Freedom Circle on Facebook where we talk about recovery, dreams, goals, and provide support for those struggling with addiction. The link is below.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to the 1% in Recovery Podcast
• 1:23 March Madness Gambling Explosion
• 3:40 The Lie That Gambling Is Entertainment
• 6:05 More Addictive Than Heroin
• 9:00 The Physical and Financial Toll
• 12:15 Enjoy Games Without Gambling

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Once again, here we are with March Madness. What is going to take place this year, in 2025? Welcome again to another episode of the 1% in Recovery podcast, where we encourage you to laugh every day, to work hard, work hard in recovery, work hard in your jobs, in your business, in school, work hard in your relationships Just work. You want something out of life. You've got to work and to love unconditionally. Just put much more love out there in the universe and watch. All that love plus more, come back to you. Just love more. More come back to you, just love more. Now, what we keep encouraging people to do is to join the Recovery Freedom Circle on Facebook. The link is down below. That is a community where we talk about the steps. We talk about recovery, dreams, goals, things that you may have questions on, things that you may be struggling with, something inspirational, motivational, things that you may have questions on, things that you may be struggling with. Something inspirational, motivational, something to get you moving. So you can be a part of this. How am I going to live my best life and make sure you can keep saying life is beautiful, Life is beautiful and life is wonderful.

Speaker 1: 1:23

Now let's jump in to this week's episode, march Madness. Here it is about. We just had all the brackets come out. This is Sunday night, before you start doing the last ones in where they do this kind of round robin, whether in the men's and women's, four different games are going to be played. So, technically, you don't have 64 teams anymore, you have 68. And how that increases much more ability to gamble. Now a lot of people have to understand. We are in almost.

Speaker 1: 2:01

There's always some type of big event gambling-wise. Now the biggest one-day event to gamble is the Super Bowl. So we talk about how much was bet on this year's Super Bowl. They say $1.39 billion. That's legal betting. Now there's a much bigger non-legal offshore bookies in your own town that they still are claiming is about four times the amount of whatever is legally bet. Here's the thing the legal bets keep increasing month after month, year after year. I know that there's more people in this world. There seems to be, I guess there seems to be much more money being floated, because I don't know where all these people are getting money to gamble, because the majority of them are losing and the casinos and the sportsbooks are making billions and billions of dollars and not doing anything with it, not putting it back into the economy, but let's not get into an economic question, but let's just talk about March Madness. March Madness this year is going to increase 15%, they say. Last year, in 2024, it was about $2.8 billion that was gambled legally during March Madness. That's men and women over this next three weeks. This year, $3.1 billion. I'm going to repeat that $3.1 billion.

Speaker 1: 3:46

This is affecting the US economy and a lot of people, whether they're besides the casinos and the sports book. I mean, that's their business. You know I don't get into what casinos they know that they are pushing out an addictive product. They're pushing out a product where they know that they are going to reap the financial gains no different than a drug dealer. The saddest part are the people in the recovery industry that actually are the spokesperson for the casinos and the sportsbooks truly either doesn't understand gambling or they're being bought out by the industry and they are a complete fake, because no amount of gambling can be bet responsibly. That is why so much more is going online, where you are technically betting either against a computer or you're betting against AI, which means you are going to lose, lose big, lose fast, and you are going to be desperate that much quicker.

Speaker 1: 5:13

Talking about now, not just the actual games and the totals. We're talking about all the profits, talking about all the different live betting. So even if you're up, you're thinking that you oh, I got some extra money to get. I'm going to bet on this live bet or I'm already chasing, I'm already going to lose this game. So I got to do something in the third quarter or the second half or bet on this player to see what they're going to do, and the more bets you place, the higher the probability that you're going to lose.

Speaker 1: 5:43

I saw someone that was pushing that they're in recovery. That's what they say. That they are going to give you a list of things, that these are actually things that are stated by casinos and sportsbooks and they're just actually stating them verbatim. That helping people how to gamble responsibly because gambling is entertainment, that is the biggest lie. I always say compulsive gambling is a lie. But to try to tell people that gambling is entertainment, money is involved. You expect to win money, you expect to lose money. This isn't some game. You are not playing a board game, you are not just picking things out of the air and there's not going to be any type of financial consequence that's going to take place in three hours. So, number one never say that gambling is entertainment. That is just trying to brainwash kids. That is trying to brainwash the new generation that's already getting sucked into all the fantasy sports, all the fantasy leagues and they're now saying, oh, it's just entertainment.

Speaker 1: 7:02

And then another thing that these people will say these are people in recovery will say expect to lose. Well, if I expect to lose, why am I gambling? Because other times when I was gambling, I always thought that I was going to win. I was a good sports bettor. I was a horrible stock placer betting in the stock market. But in the end it's never about the money, it's about the time. It's about the loss of ambition. It's about trying to get something for nothing.

Speaker 1: 7:34

There's so much sinister stuff around gambling that just kind of just zaps out your identity. There's so the other things that you take a break from gambling. If you're down, you're trying to win it back. There's no BS. There's no time. You got to either come up with rent money, you got to come up pay with the bookie. There's a lot of thousand things. There's no time to take a break and someone else going to watch over your money. There's all these other so-called tips, which are complete garbage.

Speaker 1: 8:07

But, like I say, the two worst are saying that gambling is entertainment and that you expect to lose. I should never say anything. Just say gambling is an addictive product, much more addictive than heroin. I'm going to repeat that Because it's on your phone and because your phones are AI and they've already kind of went into your brain waves. Gambling is more addictive than the most addictive drugs. A lot of people want to debate me. I'd love to debate anybody out there about how gambling is going to continually be a scourge on the US economy, no matter what happens with any president, congress, federal Reserve, whatever they do to try to manipulate and try to help the economy. If you have this many people gambling, this many people losing it affects household income. It will not go into the economy. And then people are not going to restaurants, people are not buying certain things, they're not going on trips, they're not repairing their car or their house. There's so many levels of the destruction. So I encourage people don't gamble, you're just going to lose. And the other part that they try to say is that it makes gambling much more entertaining. Oh God, I love to laugh, but that is complete BS.

Speaker 1: 9:43

When a person gambles, they are tense. It doesn't matter if they have $5, $500, or $5,000 on the game. Your body becomes tense. It's almost like this mini traumatic event. Throughout the two hours Depends on how long your bet is going to be. I'm talking about a normal game, whether you're talking about football or basketball or baseball. It's usually about three hours, and over those three hours, not only is your body in this tense mode, there's high anxiety. There's all this up and down. There's a brief moments of joy when you're winning. There's a brief moments of joy when you're winning. There's anger and disgust when you're losing, and then, when the final outcome comes out, it's just almost like just relief. Now I know that I either won or I lost.

Speaker 1: 10:33

More times than not you've lost, especially if you're doing other kind of crazy things like parlays or teasers and all these other types of stuff that are just geared to suck you in and just take your money. That is. Their whole objective is to suck out your bank account. They don't give a shit about you. They're never going to intervene and stop you from gambling. A casino or a sport book is not going to stop you, and the reason why most people don't get help is because it's completely secretive from their spouse or their parents or their kids. And then when it's almost too late, then they start crying and they need help because they can't pay a certain bill, Either about someone's about to get evicted, something's about to get repoed, something about to be foreclosed on. One of these things is going to happen. That's when they finally start to come clean, but it doesn't mean that they're going to stop gambling, because it is difficult. Got to do something like the Recovery Freedom Circle that I've introduced. After 25 years I have this roadmap to help people. But here again March Madness is upon us. Don't believe in all the BS.

Speaker 1: 11:45

Legalized gambling does not bring integrity to the game. There's so many articles out there about people just looking out whether it's prop betting, whether it's actual games, people throwing games, people kind of manipulating certain amounts of bets. There's a reason why gambling was always prohibited from all the major sports leagues, especially since the 1919 Chicago White Sox World Series with their Cincinnati Reds. There is so much that had gone on. And then there was obviously different types of gambling situations, either football or basketball, where some players were banned for a year. Certain player teams were found out about point shaving. This goes back on whether we're talking about the mafia, whether we're talking about bookies, whether we're talking about people just trying to make a buck.

Speaker 1: 12:39

Once you introduce gambling, you may think that you have control over it. You don't. You have zero control of what's going to happen, and there's so many stories that, when politicians or certain businesses, people are understanding this I didn't think that this would happen People throwing games, doing all this. Well, you just don't understand the mind of a compulsive gambler, Someone who gambles. They become a different person. But here we are March Madness, don't play. Watch the games. I'm in Houston, so I'm cheering on the University of Houston to win their first championship. Just enjoy the game. Don't gamble on it. You're going to enjoy it so much more because you're not going to be tense, you're not going to be anxious, you're not going to be angry, disgusted. Even if you win a few games, more than likely, you're going to keep getting betting and you're going to end up losing. So I want you to keep your money and spend it on something much more worthwhile. With that, we're going to conclude this episode of the 1% in Recovery podcast.