Chronic losers, says the article. Not whales. That's unexpected. I'd thought that those big gambling sites were parimutuel, where the counterparty is other bettors and the site just takes a cut. Horse racing tracks and prediction markets work that way. The house can't lose, and doesn't care who wins. The odds keep changing as bets come in and the odds rebalance.

Apparently that's not true for sports betting. A 2024 study out of Connecticut found that 1.8% of problem gamblers in the state accounted for 51% of sports betting revenue.[1]

[1] https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/DMHAS/Publications/2023-CT-FIN...