PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Thousands of fans filed into Chase Field on Monday night to watch the Diamondbacks take on the A’s.
Those fans came to watch baseball; some also came to watch their bets.
“I would say I bet, I don’t know, probably like a few times a week and I just do it for fun,” said Tyler Erickson, a D-backs fan from Scottsdale.
A newly published survey from the Arizona Department of Gaming found that 84% of adults in the state gambled in the past 12 months, with nearly 20% falling into a moderate to high risk category for gambling-related problems based on the Problem Gambling Severity Index.
Sports betting became legal in Arizona in 2021. Since then, 14 licensed operators took in more than $670 million in bets in May 2026 alone. Thirty percent of adults reported gambling every week.
Elise Mikkelsen, director of the Division of Problem Gambling at the Arizona Department of Gaming, said there were a couple of results she was not expecting.
“I am kind of surprised by the dramatic increase in frequency at this point in time,” she said.
Mikkelsen attributed the surge in part to the growing number of options available to bettors, including unlicensed platforms.
“When new activities are introduced, when new products are introduced, there’s a certain amount of time when everybody’s having a great time, as they should be. And fallouts tend to not show up for quite some time,” Mikkelsen said. “So I am surprised that three years in, we’re already seeing a vast increase in some of these activities.”
She noted that negative fallout from newly introduced activities often takes time to surface.
“For me, it’s all about accessibility. We have options like we’ve never had before,” Mikkelsen says. “I don’t think that we’re going to see those numbers go down. However, I would love to continue to see the awareness level increase. People understand that there’s hope and help available.”
The survey also found that public support for the department’s treatment services is high, and that the number of people aware of available help resources has increased.
“Rather than just saying, you know, we need to worry about people and their gambling, we need to worry about their gambling as part of its entire health picture. We need to find people who are willing to partner with us to get this a part of everyday screening in public health and become more of a part of behavioral health framework,” explained Mikkelsen.
If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, you can reach out to the state’s confidential hotline at 1-800-NEXT-STEP (639-8783), texting NEXTSTEP to 53342, or by clicking/tapping here.
See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? Please click here to report it.
Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send it to us here with a brief description.
Copyright 2026 KTVK/KPHO. All rights reserved.