Meta verdict may help, but attorney notes gambling cases feature key difference from social media suits
The American legal system is increasingly awash with lawsuits alleging that sports betting companies intentionally build apps that prey on customers with gambling disorder tendencies.
The legal path to proving the allegations and making these companies pay for it is likely years off, Whitney Ray Di Bona, an attorney and consumer safety advocate at Drugwatch, told Gambling Insider. But a raft of around 80 state-level lawsuits before and following a historic ruling in New Mexico against Meta at least provides a roadmap, she said.
Di Bona hopes that the suits Drugwatch – the mass tort litigation arm of The Wilson Firm LLP – are helping litigate become part of an eventual class action movement. Litigation against gambling entities is not new. But many of the individual lawsuits being filed nationally are, Di Bona said, unique because of what they allege.
“What makes them really interesting is they’re being filed on product liability theories, where they’re basically saying that these apps are products, which is kind of a new way of looking at these things,” she said. “We’re sort of seeing a wave of this going on right now between all of the social media harm lawsuits. We’ve got Roblox lawsuits. So it’s sort of a trend that’s happening right now.”
And now there seems to be a precedent, or at least an opportunity for further litigation in a mushrooming mass tort movement that could expand on a March ruling in which a jury found Meta liable for misleading customers about the safety of its online platforms.
“They’re basically saying that the apps themselves are products that have intentionally been made with these addictive features that are trapping these users into the platforms,” Di Bona explained, “and then causing them emotional distress, anxiety, depression, in some cases self-harm, and obviously, causing these people to lose lots and lots of money.”
Drugwatch’s legal partners are involved in some of these suits, Di Bona said. Public health organizations increasingly are, too, including the Public Health Advocacy Institute, whose litigation efforts previously focused on tobacco.
Noteworthy National Sports Betting Lawsuits
A sampling of some of the cases in some phase of litigation in the United States alleging that operators designed their sports betting apps to exploit addiction:
Sage & Thompson v. FanDuel, DraftKings, NFL, Genius Sports (Pennsylvania state court)
In a 2026 case, plaintiffs Christopher Sage and Terry Thompson, in conjunction with PHAI, accused DraftKings and FanDuel – utilizing NFL data supplied to the sportsbooks by Genius Sports – of offering a “known addictive product,” notably in-game micro-betting. The plaintiffs claim combined losses of $2 million.
Daniel Arroyo vs. DraftKings, FanDuel (Massachusetts Superior Court)
- In a case filed in March, hours after the Meta ruling, Arroyo claimed to have lost around $160,000 on FanDuel, $20,000 with DraftKings, and developed a gambling addiction because FanDuel uses app data, such as time spent wagering, to concoct personalized algorithms that bombarded him with targeted notifications and advertisements that prompted more wagering.
- Arroyo claims that sportsbooks mine bettor behavior to exploit them “precisely when they’re most susceptible, like late at night or after a big loss,” and that “[defendants] have full visibility into users’ concerning betting patterns and then push the users to gamble further through targeted advertising, personalized ‘bonus’ incentives, and ‘push’ notifications.”
READ: Massachusetts gambling addiction lawsuit complaint
Some past lawsuits filed under general negligence theories have been dismissed, Di Bona said, because “there’s really no duty of care to prevent compulsive gambling.”
That’s where the attacking app design could change results, she noted.
“These are emerging cases. It’s newer litigation,” she explained. “So we’re kind of at the very beginning stages of it. But it’s going to be very interesting to see, you know, where these cases go and what happens with them.”
Di Bona is unaware of any gambling-related cases using the Meta approach yet coming to a legal fruition.
Lawsuits Don’t Seek An End To Legal Sports Betting
While Ohio in June became the third known state where legislators are seeking to repeal legal sports betting, the suits against gambling companies don’t generally request a ban.
“But they are basically saying, ‘Hey, you have designed these apps in such a way that they are maybe in some ways illegal,’” Di Bona said. “Some states have restrictions and laws that are passed on gambling, like if you were to go into a casino. And so a lot of these allegations are basically saying that they’re not complying with some of those protections that are in place for people who maybe go in person to a casino. This is something that these people are carrying around in their pocket now. People have never had the access and the ability to just gamble from home all day, every day, whenever they want to pick their phone up and do it.”
Discovery, Di Bona said, should be as fascinating as in the Meta case, where, through cross-examinations by the New Mexico Department of Justice, attorneys proved to jurors the company engaged in “dishonesty and design choices that harm children.” A jury awarded $375 million in civil penalties for violating the state’s consumer protection laws.
“I’m sure that we’re going to find probably lots of really interesting information about what’s gone on behind the scenes with the people who have developed these apps and the decisions that have been made and why they made those decisions,” Di Bona said. “I think that that’s all going to be really, really interesting to see if we get a chance to see it.”
Gambling companies have not responded to media questions about app design, but attorneys for them have insisted – unsuccessfully in Pennsylvania and Illinois – that product liability laws don’t apply because betting platforms are services.
Meta Verdict Different From Most Gambling Suits In A Key Way
The philosophies behind the Meta and sportsbook app suits are similar, yet differ. The Meta verdict established a precedent of responsibility for companies on platforms like YouTube, but mainly in how they interact with, and, in the the opinion of the court, exploit minors. Sports betting is legal for only those 21 and older in the vast majority of the 41 American jurisdictions where markets are active.
While prediction markets have come under great scrutiny for their marketing to, or at least, in the general direction of minors, and a USA Today investigation found numerous cases of minors masquerading as adults to bet on legal apps, the recent wave of litigation focuses mainly on adult addiction.
The issues of how gambling companies market to minors or young adults, via social media influencers or how they exploit their affinity for gamblified apps like Roblox remain complex, said Motley Rice attorney Lance Oliver, who helped litigate for New Mexico in the Meta case. All brands want to secure the next generation of consumers at a young age, he said, but gambling products come with a higher degree of responsibility for the seller than shoes or phones.
“But when you’re talking about addictive products or addictive behavior, that can have lifelong consequences for kids,” he said. “That’s obviously when you get into really disturbing territory.”
Di Bona said the general public, and by extension juries, are “more sensitive to child plaintiffs.”
“Obviously, you have these kids, their brains are not fully developed, and they’re being targeted by these apps with all these addictive features,” she said. “Some of these [gambling] cases, I know they have talked about them targeting people under 18. So there’s a little bit of that out there. But the majority of the plaintiffs in these cases are adults. And so I think it’s going to be interesting to see if any of these cases go to a jury trial.”
The key difference, Di Bona noted, is how courts evaluate the level of responsibility for gambling companies dealing with consenting adults.
“You can make that decision versus the social media cases where you have children that are not capable, necessarily, of making those same decisions,” Di Bona said. “I think it’s going to be interesting to see if juries have the same sympathy for the plaintiffs in these cases as they do the plaintiffs in the social media harm cases. But there’s definitely a lot of parallels between the allegations and the addictive nature of the algorithms themselves.”
How Would Apps Change If Legal Losses Mount?
Most of the recent civil actions have focused on FanDuel and DraftKings, which together control at least 80% of the legal sports betting market in the United States. As the legal sports betting market has evolved since the fall of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018, gambling companies have spent millions designing apps to retain customers, make play “frictionless,” and develop loyalty through an increased emphasis on a social experience. That approach would be greatly impacted by the product being deemed corrosive and exploitative by the courts.
“If we have all these courts that are going to start handing down these decisions saying the algorithm is addictive, is it going to force them to make changes to the platforms?,” she pondered. “And there are a lot of the states where they are suing the [social media] platforms. And I think those cases are situations where we have, for instance, like the Roblox litigation, they have now settled with a couple of states, and the states have put requirements in there of different things like, ‘Hey, you need to add on these features to make this safer for kids and things like that.’
“I don’t know that we’re going to see states filing lawsuits against these online gambling platforms. But say these cases start going to jury trial and they start finding them liable, are they going to actually make changes to these platforms? Are they going to take away some of these features?”
SEE ALSO: Report: Gambling Industry Spent 8.7 Times More on Celebrity Endorsements Than Responsible Gambling
In a society where the word “addictive” is often brandished as a compliment for products, adaptation will be a crucial balance for sportsbooks, as it would for purveyors of products not considered clinically addictive.
“We know that gambling is addictive. We know that they want people staying on these platforms as long as possible,” she said. “It’s something that I think we’re going to kind of have to wait and see what happens. First of all, what happens with the cases and these lawsuits, and then, what kind of meaningful changes the apps might be able to make where it’s still fun for people that want to go on, and gamble, but they can make it less addictive.”
The post Recent Online Sports Betting Addiction Lawsuits Taking New Approach appeared first on Gambling Insider.
