If you’re like me, you’ve probably seen about five bajillion sports-betting advertisements over the last few years. You likely know people who are really into sports betting and talk in spreads, parlays, and prop bets.
And you’ve probably wondered, “Is all this sports betting … OK?”
The answers are now becoming more apparent—and they can give us universal lessons for building good habits and breaking bad ones. Before we dive in, some quick housekeeping:
Quick housekeeping
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Audio version
It’s at the bottom of this post
Now back to our question: “Is all this sports betting … OK?”
The answers to that question are indeed becoming more apparent: On Thursday, the U.S. federal prosecutors charged NBA figures in sports gambling conspiracies that altered games and led insiders to win big.
In one particularly egregious example, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier gave his friend a heads-up that he’d be leaving the game early so his friend could win hundreds of thousands of dollars on Rozier’s game performance.
Sports betting has been running fast and loose. From 2018 to 2024, the revenue of sports betting companies grew 34-fold to $13.7 billion, and the industry grows roughly 20 percent annually.
Beyond the recent scandal, there’s other questionable stuff going on (see this footnote for examples1).
But I’m less interested in the scandal of the week and more interested in what the sports betting boom itself reveals about modern behavior. Sports betting is a vivid example of a bigger pattern that now shapes how we eat, spend, work, scroll, and live.
There’s a saying in Vegas, “the house always wins.” And that phrase can be applied to many ways corporations are steering our behavior in ways that hurt us. They’re pulling three levers to win big.
The good news: We can take charge and use those same three levers to improve our lives in many ways, from exercising more to eating better to saving money to improving our relationships and mental health.
From here you’ll learn:
-The three hidden levers corporations use to steer us into harmful behaviors.
-Why your brain is wired to fall for them.
-How to use each lever to dismantle 9 of the most common bad habits.
-How to use each lever to build 9 powerful habits that will change your life.