In the midst of a recent pickup basketball game, a friend of mine called a time-out. He ran to the sideline, hopped on the bleacher, and yanked out his phone. Still scrolling, he yelled out the final score of the Cleveland Browns football game to the group of mostly undergraduate students who — to my surprise — seemed unbothered that the flow of the game had stopped.

Giddy with excitement, he told us he won his three-leg parlay on DraftKings. I surveyed my team of twelve after the game, and seven of them (all jobless) told me they regularly gamble on sports. Any longtime fan can see that something is amiss here.

I wrote several years ago for Jacobin about Robinhood and the massive growth of retail investors in the stock market: amateurs were encouraged to day-trade with no guard rails and got fleeced by the middleman in the process. As infuriating as it was to witness people lose their savings on obscure options contracts in 2020, I fear a more lasting, and therefore sizable, wealth transfer is undergirding the growth of sports gambling. This also has some surprising beneficiaries: namely state and local governments.