What Sports Gambling Is Learning From Big Tobacco

Why is America’s leading advocate for gambling addicts now pushing betting bills?

Minnesota State Senator John Marty was furious with the nonprofit National Council on Problem Gambling, so much so that he couldn’t wait until morning to fire off an angry email. “I am deeply disappointed to see this!” he wrote to an NCPG staffer one night in April 2025, after a Senate colleague shared the draft of an op-ed by Keith Whyte, NCPG’s longtime executive director and one of America’s most prominent advocates for mitigating gambling harm, endorsing an industry-backed bill that would legalize sports betting in Minnesota.

Marty, a Democrat and staunch critic of the gambling business, was dismayed: NCPG traditionally remains neutral on gambling expansion, but that hadn’t stopped Whyte from speaking forcefully over the years about dangers associated with the online betting boom. After a 2018 Supreme Court decision, Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, opened the floodgates by declaring a 1992 federal ban on sports gambling unconstitutional, Whyte warned Congress, “This Frankenstein’s monster of advertising, access, and action is unprecedented.” Returning to Capitol Hill six years later—by which point Americans were legally wagering about $150 billion every year—Whyte declared: “The evidence is overwhelming that expanded sports betting has led to increased harm on a national scale.”

Yet a few months after delivering that impassioned testimony, Whyte was pushing to legalize sports betting in Minnesota, one of about a dozen holdout states, arguing that people there were wagering with black-market bookies, and a “legal, regulated marketplace is far safer than unregulated platforms that lack basic safeguards.” The Gopher State had previously rejected several sports-wagering proposals, but Whyte’s endorsement—which argued that this bill included the strongest consumer protections in the country—was viewed by some state senators as a game changer.

Marty hadn’t noticed the bio at the bottom of Whyte’s op-ed describing his NCPG tenure in the past tense. The NCPG staffer he emailed provided further clarity. “[Whyte] is a paid lobbyist of the Sports Betting Alliance now, so they are paying him for this opinion,” the person wrote. “To say it is frustrating to us is an understatement. Not only because he has changed course from his 26 years at NCPG, but because it leads to mix-ups like this.” (Marty shared their exchange on the condition that The New Republic not identify the staffer.)

The Sports Betting Alliance lobbies on behalf of five top sports gambling operators: FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, Fanatics Sportsbook, and bet365. After Marty told his colleagues about Whyte’s new affiliation, he said support for the bill collapsed. Minnesota still hasn’t authorized bookmaking, though this past April, Whyte wrote another op-ed, in The Minnesota Star Tribune, urging the state to reconsider.

Marty called Whyte’s turn to lobbying, and his efforts to disguise those shifting loyalties, “disturbing,” though he added, “maybe the guy just changed his mind on all this.”

Whyte insists that’s not the case, telling me, “I’ve got 30 years of being pretty consistent on these issues, and that’s, I think, what people value.”

He describes himself as a “strategic adviser” to SBA, and the organization said he does not provide lobbying services. Yet there’s no doubt Whyte has been dispatched to influence lawmakers nationwide on behalf of the gambling industry: In Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., he’s written op-eds and testified in favor of expanding legal sports betting and online casino gambling, while opposing efforts to curtail those industries or raise their taxes.

Recruiting former critics like Whyte is a powerful tool for sustaining the betting business’s meteoric growth.

The tobacco industry was notorious for co-opting trusted health experts to vouch for the safety of smoking. Today’s gambling giants are deploying a similar strategy, and Whyte is perhaps the most egregious example, considering he’s leveraging his reputation as NCPG’s longtime leader to advance the interests of sports betting corporations. Some former colleagues feel betrayed. Americans have legally wagered more than $650 billion since that Supreme Court decision, and nearly half of bettors say they’ve felt ashamed after losing a bet. Evidence........

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