Gambling’s Quantum State: Everyone’s All In

What do you get when you cross “be careful what you wish for” and “Schrodinger’s Cat”?

You get the state of American online gambling, 2025.

While the prognosticators among us are doing their honest best to suss out where we’re headed, I’m positive the only things I know for sure are a) not one person alive could’ve predicted where we are right now, and b) despite the mathematical impossibility, even fewer know where we’re headed. 

Remember when — you know, like a year ago — the only talk was about the now-quaint efforts by some forward-thinking legislators at the state level, seeking to legalize sports betting on online casinos in their states?

Ha.

Those efforts feel like a horse-drawn wagon being pulled across the prairie.

Now the talk is of social casinos. Sweepstakes-style sports betting and casinos. Crypto-based sports betting and casinos. Prediction markets. Robinhood. I’m probably missing something or another that’s bubbling under the surface as I type.

A few years ago, when PASPA fell and a few states legalized iCasino, it felt like the Wild West.

Today feels more like a mission to Mars.

Smoke signals

Honestly, where we’re at right now reminds me a bit of the cannabis industry. (I know, the shock of a writer trying to draw a parallel between these two vices.)

Consider: Weed in the 1980s was low-level THC, and you had to put in a little work to get it. Not that different from gambling. You wanted to get some money down legally, you had to get to Vegas or Atlantic City (more or less).

As time went on, calls for legalization grew, some lawyers got involved, and next thing you know, state legislatures got busy passing laws allowing marijuana and gambling.

It seemed so easy: Let people who want to smoke a little grass smoke a little grass, let people who want to gamble have more geographic options.

Smoke a little weed, play a little blackjack, no big whoop.

Fast forward to today, where THC levels in weed are about 10x what they used to be, teenagers are buying Delta-8 THC products at gas stations, and you can buy oils that are up to 95% THC (or so I’m told).

And you can also play 30 hands of blackjack in 60 seconds online, bet on the location of the next pitch, buy sweepstakes coins and eventually sell them for cash, trade Super Bowl futures on Crypto.com, wager as to what will happen to alleged United Healthcare CEO-killer Luigi Mangione, bet on who the next Bears head coach will be on Kalshi, and Robinhood is getting ready to launch into sports betting and … 

I mean, what’s next?

I don’t know. Neither do you.

Wishes and cats

If you’re reading this, chances are at some point in the past you wished for more forms of legalized gambling.

Congratulations! We have that covered.

You may not be that familiar with Schrodinger’s Cat, so here’s a layman’s explanation, thank you very much ChatGPT, since we’re on the topic of “no one saw this coming, eh?”: “Imagine a cat in a sealed box with a mechanism that has a 50% chance to kill the cat, depending on whether a radioactive atom decays. Until you open the box to check, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time — it’s in a superposition of states. The idea highlights how, in quantum mechanics, particles can exist in multiple states until measured.”

And that, my friends, is exactly where we are in the online gambling world.

We’ve wished for more, and we’ve gotten more in spades. 

As a result, we have ourselves a very confused cat, and we — and it — have no idea what’s going to happen. The world of online gambling now exists in multiple states all at once. 

Would it surprise you if, when we open the box in five years, the “cat” is a heavily regulated world where DraftKings and FanDuel are the Visa and Mastercard, the UPS and FedEx, of the gambling world?

It wouldn’t surprise me.

Would it surprise you if, when we open the box in five years, the “cat” is an unregulated free-for-all where there’s no center and free market rules? 

It wouldn’t surprise me.

Would it surprise you if, when we open the box in five years, the “cat” is something wholly unrecognizable from what is out there today?

It wouldn’t surprise me.

No one knows, cats are at the ready, the mission to Mars has begun.

I’d say “buckle up” to add to the metaphor stew, but I don’t see a single seat belt in sight.