Guest post by Chris Robison
Last year I decided I was done waiting for my employer of 13 years to make me happy at work, so I went looking. I landed somewhere I never expected: the betting and gaming arm of a sports company. I grew up in a church that teaches gambling is morally wrong, a get-something-for-nothing vice that a people set apart from the world should avoid entirely, so I almost didn’t apply. But I knew I was good at talking myself out of change, so I set my preconceived notions aside and went for it.
This job has turned out to be amazing for me and one of the best I’ve ever had. And learning more about sports gambling, prediction markets, casinos and how those systems and businesses all work from the inside has been fascinating. And I want to talk about some of the surprising things I’ve observed and learned in this space and relate them to the church, our church experience and how we approach life.
So many people think about gambling in terms of potential financial gain. And this is not too far off from how people engage with the church. Church participation is generally framed around the rewards you receive in this or the next life; whether that be eternal glory, godhood, eternal families, God bestowing vague blessings, etc, there is always some gamble to be made and some gain or win to be had. And church members believe it so much they even stake 10% of their income on it. I’d wager that whether you’re taking a leap of faith in a religious sense with your money, time, membership, etc., or putting your money down on a sports team, you are most likely framing either circumstance as a bet on a particular outcome. I don’t know if anyone has counted, but most General Conference talks seem to attach “blessings” as the reason for doing most things we do. And the pattern runs straight back to scripture. The go-to verse on tithing, Malachi 3:10, reads like a sportsbook promo: “prove me now herewith… if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” Put your money down, and the payout will be more than you can hold. The church opposes gambling because it’s driven by a desire to get something for nothing. Elder Christofferson’s recent talk tries to frame gambling as producing nothing of value and gaining something without work as a moral failing. I’ll talk about that more later. The church’s own scripture on tithing is an invitation to stake something now for a far bigger return later. And even more ironically, our own Book of Mormon scripture (Mosiah 2:21) teaches us that even if we labored all our days, we’d still be unprofitable servants. To me that essentially means that whatever “glory” or reward we get is ultimately because of grace and not because of what we did personally (cue the faith vs works debate). That feels awfully close to “something for nothing.” Pay in faithfully, but the outcome isn’t up to you. That’s not a sports bet. That’s a lottery, also a form of gambling the church opposes by name. I do find it ironic Elder Christofferson highlights the lack of work part as a moral failing of gambling when the church has made obscene amounts of money on its investments. But, I digress.
I would say the biggest difference between “the house” and the church is in how each keeps you at the table. The house relies on incentives: free bets, deposit bonuses, odds boosts, all designed to make the reward look irresistible. And it can get aggressive about it. As I’ll get to later, DraftKings was recently called out for using AI to aim those incentives at the people most likely to lose. But the house doesn’t threaten you if you stop playing. The church uses incentives too, in the form of promised blessings, but it adds threats on top. I’m thinking of D&C 64:23, “he that is tithed shall not be burned at his coming,” which has long been interpreted to mean that tithing is fire insurance. Stop paying, or stop believing, and you’re not just missing out on a reward; you’re in danger. The house has to make the offer lovely enough that people reach for it. The church only has to make the alternative frightening enough that people don’t dare let go. And frankly, this should be a concern. If people don’t find what you have to offer lovely enough on its own merits without adding threat right behind it, are you really offering something that valuable?
So why do people really gamble? One of the most fascinating statements I heard early on at this company from leadership that realigned my thinking about what gambling was: “we are in the entertainment industry”. You might read that and think, “well, duh”. But the switch in perspective is really interesting, because people who see gambling for what it really is, tend to engage with it in healthy ways and those that don’t can find themselves endlessly chasing a payoff leading to some very well documented unhealthy behaviors that need help and rehabilitation. Fundamentally, gambling is a form of entertainment meant to enhance your lived experience. And regardless of whether you win or lose, you still go away having had your lived experience enhanced. For sports gambling, placing stake on your favorite team to win or athletes to perform incredible feats enhances your experience of the game regardless of whether or not you win those bets. You go away from that game “energized” by the win or loss because of skin you staked in it. And while I won’t classify the church as entertainment, the parallel holds. Just as many gamblers think the point is the payout, many members would say the purpose of the gospel is salvation, eternal families, etc. Many dedicate their lives chasing after the payoff at the end of the rainbow. The covenant checklist leads to a jackpot. But underneath all the doctrine, policy, ordinances, etc, the purpose of the gospel is to fundamentally enhance one’s life experience. You’re on the “right” team, you know the “right” things to get where you want to go, you feel your money is going somewhere important when you give it and it has tools to frame and address challenges as they come your way. You’re brought to Jesus so that your life is better. I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone that has chosen to follow the gospel who also won’t acknowledge that it enhances their engagement with life in some meaningful way.
And this brings me to something the gambling industry calls responsible gaming. A lot of people love to employ the phrase “the house always wins” as if that is solely a bad thing or if there is something rigged about the system. That could have been true in the past or maybe currently true on illegal platforms, I don’t know. However, legalized sports gambling is very highly regulated. There are many requirements that have to be met in each individual state that allows it. To remain a viable business, yes, over the long haul, the house has to win more than the patrons do. On average, legal sports books aim to hold about 8-12% of the cash that goes through them. And they try to stick to that margin, because if the house wins too much, people go somewhere else. It is a very careful dance they have to play. Players have to win to want to keep coming back, but they can’t win too much. And the books have to make sure they don’t let players that exhibit unhealthy behavior keep playing. Believe it or not, there is recognition by a lot of industry that they orchestrate their own demise when they encourage players to bet money they can’t afford to lose. Some take this more seriously than others. A recent NYT article called out DraftKings for using AI to target the people most likely to lose with betting incentives, while its systems for catching unhealthy gambling had fallen behind. That’s not a good look, and it should be called out. But even with lapses like that, legal sports gambling platforms highlight the risks of addiction, provide free hotlines, and run detection systems aimed at cutting people off when unhealthy choices are being made. Because in the end, gambling platforms should not want customers who spend money meant for food or other life obligations on gambling. And in legal sports gambling systems, some are starting to have policies where if you report/complain that you lost money meant for these other nonnegotiable things in life, they will give you your money back, but then cut you off for life. From inside the industry, I see a great many people that can and do engage with gambling in a healthy way.
Now, I don’t want to dress up gambling platforms as altruistic–they are not. And since I’m guessing my employment with a gambling division adds bias that readers will immediately detect, I just want to say that I’m not naive to harms gambling has caused. I don’t personally gamble. My employer gives me play money to gamble with in our platform (not only is it illegal for me to gamble in Utah, but I cannot in any way use my company’s platform to gamble in any state where it is legal) so I can see how it all works. I’m not good at sports gambling, in fact I’m terrible at it. I’ve tried casinos once in my life and the math just doesn’t work out for me. It just holds no interest for me personally. In my company specifically, I see a commitment to responsible gaming that is encouraging. Legalizing sports gambling has also introduced significant amounts of consumer protections, monitoring systems and regulations that weren’t there before to keep people more safe.
However, the harms can be real and are well documented. One study found bankruptcies rose about 28% in states that legalized online sports betting, with low-income young men hit hardest. And the safeguards that do exist are underused: in Massachusetts, nearly 300,000 bettors took a short “cool off” break in a single year, but fewer than 500 excluded themselves for a year or more. There are other extensively documented harms caused over the years and yes, it is something we have to grapple with. And I would say that some of the platform’s approaches to drawing people in have been immoral. However, I won’t go so far as to say all of gambling is immoral–rather it’s something that just is. A lot of people get enjoyment from it without being harmed by it. And obviously that is not the case for everyone. Bringing this all back to my earlier point–even an industry with real, documented harms is required to show you the odds, offer you limits, and answer to regulators when it falls short. And as uncomfortable as this is for some to hear, the church, which condemns gambling as spiritually destructive, is held to none of that. “Responsible churching” is an area where the LDS church severely lacks. Church hurt is well documented, but the church’s response seems to always default to self-preservation instead of reformation.
Consider two cases. In Bisbee, Arizona, a father confessed to his bishop that he was sexually abusing his daughter. The bishop called the church’s abuse help line, and a lawyer from the church’s law firm advised him not to report it. The abuse went on for about seven more years and spread to a second daughter (AP). The church’s response wasn’t reform. It defended itself in court, and in July 2026 the Arizona Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the bishop’s confidentiality claim shielded him from reporting. The help line still operates, and efforts to close Arizona’s clergy reporting loophole have repeatedly stalled. Or take the Indian Student Placement Program, which placed Native American children in members’ homes, where some say they were sexually abused. The church settled those suits confidentially, with no admission of wrongdoing and no apology, and according to the plaintiffs’ attorney, church policies remain unchanged. In one case, the church even sued a Navajo woman in federal court to enforce a settlement she says she never agreed to.
It’s worth calling out some other examples where church lacks safety:
- Telling people that tithing comes first over any other obligation. In addition, telling people if they can’t make ends meet to still pay and the church will take care of you. This is such bad theology and a recipe for human harm. Especially in light of supposedly recent policy changes that only allow bishops to help up to 3-4 times before stake president approval is required. And then another threshold that needs area authority approval.
- The SEC fined the church for attempting to hide its wealth–generally lack of transparency.
- Putting men in positions of trust despite troubling past behavior. Wade Christofferson, President Christofferson’s brother, was excommunicated in 1996. According to Floodlit, an annotation barring him from callings with access to children was later removed, and only the First Presidency can remove one. In July 2026 he pleaded guilty to federal child enticement charges and admitted abusing two young girls. The church says President Christofferson had no knowledge of or influence over his brother’s membership decisions. Even taking that at face value, the system meant to keep a known risk away from children failed.
- Teaching that your spiritual experiences and answers will only align and agree with the Q15. If they don’t agree, you are in the wrong.
- In relation to targeting people, missionaries will often say they have much more success when focusing on teaching the poor.
- Telling members to stay no matter what. In a recent Scripture Central video, emeritus Seventy Lawrence Corbridge told members that “Darth Vader could be your bishop” and the culture “could be like Alcatraz,” but if the church is true, you stay (Salt Lake Tribune). I can’t imagine a more grotesque approach to church than this. By that logic, a Sith lord who slaughtered children is acceptable as a bishop, but a $10 bet on the Jazz is morally wrong.
I’m sure readers could make that list a lot longer, but I hope that point is made. And what is a person to do when they are harmed in this system—well, nothing. You’re encouraged to just forgive and forget and keep engaging in the harmful system because it is the only path back to God. And if your platform for telling those stories gets too big, you may end up in court. In April 2026, the church sued Mormon Stories. To me, it looks like a trademark case in name only: a way to make the loudest platform for church hurt pay a steep price for telling those stories. There is no regulatory system to keep churches accountable financially or behaviorally. They are given a special pass by the law in the US. It appears the only recourse is departure, which is happening at an increasing rate.
I took this job expecting to find everything the church had warned me about. In some ways I did. Gambling sells a reward you can’t have yet, asks you to stake something real for it, and keeps you at the table with the promise of a payout. What I didn’t expect was how familiar all of it would feel. The church that taught me gambling was a something-for-nothing vice runs on the same deal: pay in now, trust the payout later, and don’t ask too many questions about the odds. The difference is that the house has to answer to someone. It has to show you the odds, offer you limits, and step in when you’re getting hurt, and when it doesn’t, it ends up in the New York Times. The church answers to no one.
And the bar isn’t high. The church could tell members to feed their families before they pay tithing. It could send abuse reports to the police instead of its lawyers. It could open its books to the members who fill them. It could actually seek reparations and the active dismantling of past harmful doctrines instead of remaining silent or reframing them into something else. None of that is radical. Each one is just the church’s version of a safeguard the gambling industry already has. I’m not saying the church is a casino or anything close to it. I’m saying that a people who believe they’re set apart from the world should expect to look a lot less like it.
In the end, it feels like church leaders will forever take potshots at low risk targets. Yet, as we’ve seen over the last two years, will remain completely silent when a prophetic voice is needed the most, because it is just too risky. Or it will quietly reframe past harms as something else to avoid what would most likely have to be a very public repentance process to actually atone for harms it has caused. So as much as it is true that gambling, in one sense has perpetrated a culture of harm, it has also taken steps to be accountable for that in another however imperfect that is. The Church has not done that. And Elder Christofferson’s talk seems to be a talk highlighting a mote in another’s eye, while ignoring the beam in the church’s and his own.
Discussion questions:
- Is tithing a bet? If paying in for promised blessings isn’t a wager, what makes it different?
- The church opposes gambling because it’s a desire to “get something for nothing,” yet it teaches that exaltation comes by grace no matter how much we labor. How do you reconcile those two ideas, or can you?
- Have you ever felt that the church relied more on threats (fire insurance, losing eternal families) than on incentives to keep you engaged? How did that shape your experience?
- What would “responsible churching” look like to you? Which safeguards from the gambling industry, such as limits, transparency, or protection for people raising concerns, would you most want the church to adopt?
- Should churches be held to the same accountability standards as regulated industries? What would be lost or gained if they were?
- I fully realize the comparison here will make some readers bristle. Do you feel the comparison is appropriate and if not, why?
- What are your takeaways from Elder Christofferson’s general conference talk?
