As a practicing Mormon, McKay Coppins is prohibited from indulging in games of chance. But when @TheAtlantic asked him to write about sports betting, he asked his bishop, and, with his blessing, set off with $10,000 of the magazine's money to gamble over the course of the NFL season. "This will really just be a journalistic exercise," he assured the bishop — as a suburban dad of four who always told people he didn't have an addictive personality, he believed he was in control of the situation. Here's his story about how gambling permeated his life, affected his relationships with his family and colleagues, led him into the murky world of prediction markets, and inevitably lost the Atlantic almost its entire stake.
"Practically overnight, we took an ancient vice—long regarded as soul-rotting and civilizationally ruinous—put it on everyone’s phone, and made it as normal and frictionless as checking the weather. What could possibly go wrong?" —McKay Coppins for The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/online-sports-betting-app-addiction/686061/
#Betting #SportsBetting #Gambling #GamblingAddiction #Journalism
I found this article really interesting (journalist who has religious restrictions on betting engages in sports betting for a story). In particular, there but for the grace of the Maker:
"Now I had to consider a different possibility: Maybe I had simply constructed a life with strong enough guardrails that I’d never had to test the premise [of having an addictive personality]."
What happens when the system is designed for addiction?
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/online-sports-betting-app-addiction/686061/
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