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Hey, ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson here. I’m taking over the account to tell you about my new story. For months, I posed as a problem gambler on DraftKings to test the company's "responsible gaming" safeguards. Spoiler alert: They made me a VIP — and I lost $10K. Here's how it all went down. 🧵

2/ Why now? More people are betting on sports than ever. But as the industry soars close to $17B in revenue, calls to gambling helplines have also skyrocketed.

3/ As public scrutiny grows, DraftKings and the other big operators stress that their safeguards work. An exec told me if someone shows too many signs of problem gambling, they’ll proactively close the account — though she declined to say how many times DraftKings had done so.

4/ But over the next 10 weeks, I’d mimic the patterns of a problem gambler with the help of a panel of gambling experts and learn just how much DraftKings would encourage my recklessness — and just how little pushback I’d get as I spiraled downward.

5/ With ProPublica bankrolling me, I opened my account in April. I waved my first red flag during a Knicks game by loss chasing, or attempting to recoup my continued losses by making more and bigger bets. Soon, I was already down ~$2K — most of it blown in one night.

6/ The next day, an email popped in my inbox: 'Welcome to the DraftKings VIP Showcase.' I couldn’t believe it. My night of loss chasing was being rewarded. Reading the fine print, I was floored: The more I spent on long-odds wagers, the faster I’d advance through the ranks.

7/ An expert explained that losers like me are the bettors that sports betting companies are most interested in. A small group accounts for a large portion of revenue. And what keeps losers loyal? VIP programs. The more you bet, the more you get: free bets/swag/fancy dinners.

8/ As the @nytimes.com reported, DraftKings uses machine learning and data scientists to entice losing customers with promos to keep them going — even if those are the customers at risk of becoming addicts. The company says it doesn’t unfairly target people.

9/ A month in, I was betting so much that DraftKings’ quick-tap deposit buttons had increased to $500, $750 and $950, making it even easier to mindlessly transfer money into my account. I was also getting pummeled with push alerts inviting me to bet more.

10/ By late May, I was waving all the red flags of a compulsive gambler and had gambled away thousands. Yet the only pushback I got from DraftKings was “responsible gaming” prompts that required me to opt in — prompts that were easily swept away.

11/ Finally, I decided to set in-app limits on how much I could deposit and how much time I could spend on the app. I then received the first of four promotional push alerts just half an hour later.

12/ When I told Lori Kalani, DraftKings’ responsible gaming chief, it felt like the pushes undermined my attempt to slow it down, she disagreed. “People use our tools all the time,” she said. “And they also appreciate being offered” promos other customers get.

13/ Kalani also said the “system worked the way it was supposed to” for me. I didn’t qualify for a manual review, despite depositing $21,600 into my account in eight weeks. When I asked her if DraftKings ever *did* cut people off, this is what I got:

14/ My story takes wild turns: Baseball blackjack. Czech table tennis. My own DraftKings rep, who didn’t blink when I asked for a (hypothetical) match on a $25K deposit. I even won big with the Knicks and wondered: Am I actually good at this? But like most bettors, I wasn’t.

15/ There’s much more to the story — which you can read here — but I came away with one overarching takeaway: the “responsible gaming” prompts DraftKings served me were no match for the product design and promos pushing me to do more gambling.

16/ I also want to acknowledge that this was a controlled experiment. I could walk away. That’s not always easy for everyone. I couldn’t — and didn't try — to mimic how problem gambling can impact your real life outside the app in harmful ways.

I am not a user of the apps, but I have extensive industry experience. The penalties an actual gambling org would have experienced for NOT respecting self-exclusion to this degree would have been enough to impact the company's public earnings.

Has anyone else noticed a trend in the last decade or so, of people and companies taking an existing regulated industry, calling it something else, and using the time before regulation catches up (if it does) to make profit?

Maybe our definitions should be more broad, for regulation, or I dunno...something to prevent that.

I'm not a FanDuel user, but technically I sorta kinda have a transaction history...in that someone stole my credit card info once to run up a charge there. Gambling has a ton of knock-on effects, some of which end up hitting people who'd wanted nothing to do with it.

I'm trying to wrap my head around what makes a 'problem gambler'. There's no chance this is a legal term or it would set a precedent for allowing the government to decide how people spend their own money.If someone lacks impulse control in one area of their life, good chance they lack it in another.

Do such people deserve to be victimized by infinitely available AI powered super gambling? People with disabilities like ADHD? Trauma survivors seeking avoidant behaviors? Do they deserve this hell presented to them?

Oddly enough i have watched tens of thousands of people murdered on tv programs and movies yet the inclination for me to kill someone was never there. Strange how many of use cannot or will not separate fact from fiction.

Does the government limit how many 12-packs you can buy? Nope. Addiction is a problem that can be treated. The laws are worthless anyway. We're all one person away from an illicit buy. I wasn't carded until I was in my 20s. The items aren't the problem and more laws won't help fix what is.

Sweetheart, they target children. The laws need to be stronger and the consequences for the companies much greater. The companies are the problem. www.today.com/parents/teen...

Do you have any idea how easy it is to place very large bets and how many young people, mostly men, get sucked into gambling additction because it's so easy? You cannot watch sports in the US without being hit with ads every 5 minutes. But sure, let's just blame this on the consumer, right?

Ridiculous to say the items aren't the problem when we have tons of data that we are facing a gambling epidemic like we haven't had for 50 years because of the apps. Be serious.

sharing 30 days transaction history with experience in the gambling industry: 3/2/26 don the CON: the military operation against Iran is an unmitigated success. 3/2/26 don the CON: the US will easily prevail....

3/9/26 don the CON: the conflict will be over very soon and that it could already be considered a tremendous success...We've already won in many ways....the war is very complete, pretty much. 3/10/26 don the CON: it could be just a short while until this war really wraps up....

3/11/26 don the CON: the war will end soon and suggested it could end whenever he wanted it to....We won. In the first hour it was over. 3/12/26 don the CON: Iranian forces are pretty much at the end of the line. 3/13/26 don the CON: I do not believe it would be long before the conflict was over...