Sports Betting is the Tobacco Industry of the Digital Age

Aggressive innovative marketing, addictive products, and media saturation. Sports betting apps are using a formula we’ve seen before, and it’s working

In the 2005 movie “Thank You for Smoking” a character named BR (played the tremendously talented JK Simmons) is in the middle of a meeting with his fellow tobacco executives discussing slumping sales when says the truest statement that has ever been uttered about that industry.

“We don’t sell Tic Tacs for Christ’s sake. We sell cigarettes. And they’re cool and available and *addictive*. The job is almost done for us!”

The cigarette industry once dominated retail advertising space and customer mind share, particularly in the second half of the 20th century. Today it has been regulated and limited in its cultural scope and as a result has seen a downturn in sales. But old things often must be moved aside to make way for new things. And the playbook that cigarette companies used all those years ago has found a new home, with a new vice: legalized sports betting, the tobacco of the digital age.

The Cool Factor

When I was growing up in the 1990s, cigarette ads were everywhere. They were on billboards, in magazines, and on the sides of taxi cabs. They were sending a very direct message to…