North Carolina has collected over $250 million from sports betting since it was legalized in the state, according to the North Carolina Department of Revenue. Sports betting allows people to wager money on different outcomes for sporting events, whether it’s the final score or an individual player’s performance.
Now that North Carolina legalized it, the state can charge licensed betting operators such as DraftKings and FanDuel. In the last two years, sportsbooks reported more than $700 million in paid wagering revenue. That includes an 18% tax on gross revenue from betting companies.
The surge in sports betting has also created more conversation among students at colleges within the state. The popularity of betting among students, in particular, is nothing new for some professors. Elon sport management professor, David Bockino, is especially aware of the impact of sports betting.
Bockino said he always heard students talk about betting before 2024, but added that conversations have certainly increased after North Carolina legalized it. He said there’s more people who care about betting than before.
Since North Carolina legalized sports betting in March 2024, people in the state have quickly embraced the new market.
“I’ve been talking about sports betting in the classroom since I got to Elon, but there’s probably more talk about it,” Bockino said. “Five to ten years ago, people probably didn’t care that much about it, and now there’s a whole group of people who only care about their bets.”
With his upcoming book “Over/Under” set to cover the evolution of sports betting, Bockino said that while North Carolina may not have the influence compared to major betting cities, such as New York, Chicago and Las Vegas, there are many reasons for people in the state to frequently place bets.
The state’s emerging market, along with its balance of college and professional sports teams, provides plenty of incentives for bettors, Bockino said.
“I don’t think anything really different about how North Carolina stands out,” Bockino said. “We’re a college basketball hotbed, so I’m sure people were betting on March Madness here, on a higher degree than someone in Long Island. We’re also a big market and we have a handful of professional sports teams.”
He said he centers class discussions around sports betting since its emergence has led to more jobs within the sports industry.
“If you work in sports production, you need to know how to put betting information on the screen,” Bockino said. “If you work in marketing, you got to work with DraftKings and FanDuel to integrate their brands into broadcasts and social media. It’s just really become an essential, integral component to the entire sport industry overall, and as a sport management department, we’ve sort of put it into the curriculum.”
Bockino said one of the long-term results he’s most curious about is how sports betting influences fans’ loyalty toward teams. Rather than rooting for certain teams to win, Bockino said he thinks there may be more fans who are only rooting for their bets to succeed.
“That’s something that we need to talk about, because it was an entire generation growing up where if they don’t have these deep-seated regional loyalties to teams, they’re going to be rooting for their parlays,” Bockino said. “If we start to lose actual loyalties to teams, what does that mean for sports in 2030?”
The amount of sports betting in North Carolina has also raised questions about the numerous advertisements from betting sites. Rosa Li, who works for the department of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, expressed worry about the consequences that gambling advertisements could have on college students.
“It may make people think it’s harmless fun that everyone is partaking in, which could drive them to try it out,” Li said in an email. “They do not share the risks of developing gambling habits, disorders, or the associated harms of losing money while gambling.”
Bockino, who is also the director of Elon’s media analytics program, said the advertisement situation is a mess. 5WPR, a public relations agency based in New York, found that the sports gambling industry spent $3.9 billion on marketing in 2025 — a metric that’s continuing to increase as advertising strategies become more sophisticated. Bockino said it’s a problem for people when companies geo-target fans by placing different logistics depending on the state they live in.
“When you have a commercial during an NFL game airing on Fox, and it says in North Carolina, you’re allowed to do this, but in Virginia, you’re allowed to do this, it gets real complex,” Bockino said.
He said the perception of advertisements is mostly negative. A 2025 study by the University of Bristol found that sports fans are exposed to gambling ads every 13 seconds when watching games, which Bockino said is leading to frustration with how different advertisements are frequently shown. As a result, Bockino said sports leagues may evaluate how they are going to target people without irritating them at the same time.
“I think people believe it’s too much in your face,” Bockino said. “There’s too many mentions of it, and so I think teams and leagues are going to pull back a little bit on that because this initial rush is finally subsiding a little bit. They’ll need to know how to correctly target people who want sports betting information without pissing off people who don’t want that information.”
Although Bockino said sports betting does present more negatives than positives, he doesn’t think outlawing it will change anything. He believes that now because it’s legalized in states such as North Carolina, there’s no point in preventing it.
“There’s probably more bad stuff that happens than good stuff, but kind of cat’s out of the bag at this point,” Bockino said. “To pretend it doesn’t exist by making it illegal is silly.”
Editor’s note: For resources, the North Carolina Problem Gambling Program runs provides a hotline at 877-718-5543. More information about the program and its resources are available online at morethanagame.nc.gov/.