Pennsylvania's Problem Gambling Caucus, by the Numbers

The NewsA caucus, on the last voting day of the year

On Wednesday, October 21, 2026, state legislators stood in the Capitol Media Center in Harrisburg and announced the Pennsylvania Problem Gambling Caucus. Sen. Joe Picozzi, a Republican from Northeast Philadelphia, and Rep. Ben Sanchez, a Montgomery County Democrat, lead it. Rep. Jamie Flick, a Lycoming County Republican, and Sen. Nick Miller are founding members. Local coverage called it the first caucus in the General Assembly devoted specifically to problem gambling.

"The drug of choice is no longer marijuana or meth," Flick said. "The drug of choice now just sits right in your pocket."

Picozzi framed the work as guardrails, not prohibition. "Protecting Pennsylvanians in [this] digital economy is not anti-business," he said. "It's responsible government." He said the apps need more friction, something that can break a person out of a binge. Sanchez's line was shorter: "Gambling, as we know, is not an income strategy."

The caucus named its early targets: keeping minors away from gambling products, changing how betting is advertised, and adding time and spending limits. Reporters at the launch also heard concern about one-click deposits that can move an entire bank balance into a betting app, and about ending in-game betting on individual plays. Rep. Danilo Burgos, a Philadelphia Democrat, said the games on his teenage daughter's phone keep serving her gambling ads. That tracks: Philadelphia was the country's top media market for online gambling advertising in the first nine months of 2025, with more than $37 million spent, according to Nielsen data reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Rob Minnick, a 27-year-old who founded ODAAT Gambling Awareness after his own gambling addiction, spoke too. He said he can't put his addiction entirely on the industry, "but it sure as hell didn't make it easy to stop when everything is trying to reactivate you."

Then the facts that temper it. The announcement came on the last scheduled voting day of the year. The caucus will not meet until January 2027. It announced no legislation, though bills on several of its targets, including a Senate credit card deposit ban, have sat in committee since 2025. And it didn't form in a vacuum: the Campaign for Fairer Gambling, an advocacy group funded by Derek Webb, the British casino-game inventor behind Three Card Poker, partnered with Picozzi and Sanchez to form it, and Brianne Doura-Schawohl, the consultant who handles the campaign's state-level work, spoke at the launch. A caucus is a conversation, not a law. What makes this one worth your attention is the record it has to work with.

The ReceiptsWhat Pennsylvania's own numbers say

Pennsylvania legalized online casinos and online sports betting under Act 42 of 2017. The first apps went live in 2019. The state has run an annual assessment of the effects since late 2020, because the same law requires one. Three sets of numbers, all the state's own.

Revenue. The Gaming Control Board's year-end report puts 2025 online casino revenue at $2,775,554,529, a 27% jump over 2024. In 2021 the figure was $1.11 billion. Sports betting revenue rose from $340 million to $602 million over the same four years. Retail slots and table games were flat or slightly down. Total regulated revenue reached $6.8 billion, a record for the fifth straight year, and about 41 cents of every dollar of it went to online casino games. The Commonwealth's share in taxes and fees was $2.98 billion.

The helpline. The state's 1-800-GAMBLER line is run by the Council on Compulsive Gambling of Pennsylvania, and the Penn State report tracks its intake calls by fiscal year. In 2018-19, the last fiscal year before online casinos launched (the first online sportsbook went live in its final weeks), the helpline logged 1,099 intake calls, and 29 of them named online gambling as the caller's biggest problem. In 2024-25 it logged 2,447 intake calls, and 1,230 named online gambling. The total more than doubled. The online slice grew more than forty-fold, from under 3% of calls to just over half.

The Council's calendar-2025 report adds who is calling: 2,952 intake calls, 69% from men. Among callers who gave an age, the largest band was 25 to 34, and 43% were under 35. Internet slots were the single most-cited problem format, with 490 calls, ahead of online sports betting at 403, unspecified online gambling at 395, and casino slots at 269. Eleven intake calls involved 13- to 17-year-olds.

The survey. The Pennsylvania Interactive Gaming Assessment is produced by Penn State's Criminal Justice Research Center under contract with the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs. The 2025 edition, published in January 2026, surveyed more than 3,500 adults across two samples, which is why its headline figures are ranges. It found that 17% to 30% of Pennsylvania adults gambled online in the past year, up from about 11% in the first two years of the assessment. For the first time it estimated problem gambling across the whole adult population, screening everyone who gambled at least monthly with the Problem Gambling Measure, and classified 2.5% to 6.4% of adults as problem gamblers and another 27.9% to 29.9% as at-risk. People who gambled both online and in person had the worst profile: a 13% to 20% problem-gambling rate and median monthly spending of $105 to $230.

Two more figures from that report matter for the caucus. Only 0.2% of adults sought help for gambling in the past year, which works out to about 6% of the people the screen flagged as problem gamblers. And the state's online self-exclusion list added 4,403 enrollments in fiscal 2024-25, bringing the cumulative total to 11,195, a rise of nearly 65% in one year. Treatment demand is moving the same way: Caron Treatment Centers told the Inquirer that 160 of its inpatients in 2025 were struggling with gambling, up 162% in five years.

Already on the TableThe fixes nobody has passed yet

The caucus doesn't have to start from scratch. In July 2026, the General Assembly's own Joint State Government Commission released a staff study, ordered by House Resolution 60, on sports betting and online gambling in Pennsylvania. Its recommendations are specific:

• Ban credit card deposits for online betting, as retail slots already do. Senate Bill 265 would do it.
• Make limits mandatory, not optional: caps on losses, continuous play time and number of deposits in a period, with autoplay forbidden.
• Forbid logged-out promotions, and consider the same for individually tailored, AI-generated offers.
• Prohibit in-game microbets, which the study says "might be the most problematic wagers," and sharply curtail VIP programs.
• Collect anonymized player data from operators for independent analysis, as Colorado enacted this year with the first data due in 2028, so the state can see which products do the most harm.

So the caucus arrives with a menu already written. Its job is to turn some of it into votes.

Reading It HonestlyWhat these numbers do and don't prove

A few cautions, the same ones we apply to Michigan and Ontario.

The Penn State prevalence figures come from a screening instrument, not a clinical diagnosis, and the ranges are wide because the two samples disagree. Organizers at the launch said Pennsylvanians are at least twice as likely as the national average to experience gambling addiction. That's true of the top of the range, 6.4%, set against the National Council on Problem Gambling's national estimate of about 1% severe and 2% to 3% mild or moderate. It isn't obviously true of the bottom, 2.5%. Say "between two and a half and six percent" and you're on solid ground.

The helpline trend is strong, but a helpline measures help-seeking, not prevalence. More people know the number now, and it has been printed on every gambling ad in the state for years. Awareness alone, though, doesn't explain why the share of calls naming online gambling climbed from 3% to 50%.

And none of this is a controlled experiment. The pattern is an association in time: apps launched, calls rose, survey rates rose. The peer-reviewed causal evidence lives elsewhere, in the multi-state research we covered in Michigan and the diagnosis data from states with legal betting. Pennsylvania's numbers are consistent with that evidence. They don't replace it.

The PatternPennsylvania, Michigan, Ontario

Line them up and the shape is the same.

Michigan launched online casinos and sportsbooks in January 2021; helpline calls went from 1,341 in 2018-19 to 4,543 in 2023-24. Ontario opened its private market in April 2022; residents showing signs of problem gambling went from about 43,000 in 2018 to nearly 130,000 in 2025, and ER visits for gambling doubled. Pennsylvania launched in 2019; helpline calls naming online gambling went from 29 to 1,230.

Different jurisdictions, different measures, same direction, same demographic: young men on phones. What's different about Pennsylvania is that the state kept measuring, published the results every year, and had its own legislative staff write the fix list. Ontario shelved its baseline study. Pennsylvania's is a public PDF. The caucus has fewer excuses than most.

If You're in PennsylvaniaWhat to do today

Harrisburg will not act before January. You can.

Set the limits the law already requires. Every licensed Pennsylvania app must offer deposit, spend, wager and time limits. Under state rules, a decrease takes effect by your next login; an increase has to wait. Set them low, then lower. Why limits alone tend to fail is worth reading before you rely on them.

Self-exclude from the apps specifically. Pennsylvania runs separate self-exclusion lists for casinos, online gaming, video gaming terminals and fantasy contests, for one year, five years or life, and the online list can be joined through the Gaming Control Board's portal without setting foot in a casino. More than 11,000 people had enrolled by mid-2025. How self-exclusion works, and how to enroll.

Run your own baseline. The state's survey asks about formats, hours and monthly spend. Ask yourself the same three questions with your own statements: 90 days of deposits, hours in the apps, and who doesn't know. If the answers scare you, that's the screen. Our Pennsylvania page lists state-funded treatment, meetings and the self-exclusion links in one place, and our urgent help page covers who to call or text and what to do in the next hour, free and private.

If the number is bad, you don't have to carry it alone. Cope Compass is free: a two-minute daily check-in, the Room open any hour, and Pennsylvania counselors and meetings in one place. Start free or get the app.

The caucus is a good sign. Your number is a better one.

Sources

• abc27 / WHTM: Pennsylvania lawmakers look to combat problem gambling with new caucus. Brady Doran, October 21, 2026. Supports the Flick, Picozzi and Sanchez quotes, the caucus's stated targets, the one-click deposit and in-game betting concerns, and Brianne Doura-Schawohl's remarks at the launch.
• WENY: Problem Gambling Caucus Launched in Harrisburg. Kara Jeffers, October 21, 2026. Supports the Rob Minnick quote, Picozzi's "friction" remark, Rep. Burgos's comments, the Campaign for Fairer Gambling's role in forming the caucus, and the timing on the last voting day.
• FOX43: Pennsylvania lawmakers launch first state caucus to combat rising gambling addiction. Lauren Reehl, October 21, 2026. Supports the "first caucus" description, Sen. Nick Miller's participation, and organizers' "at least twice" the national average claim.
• Casino.org: PA Problem Gambling Caucus. Devin O'Connor, October 22, 2026. Supports the Capitol Media Center location and the January 2027 start.
• Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board: Record Gaming Revenue for 2025. January 21, 2026. Supports every revenue and tax figure, including the 2021 to 2025 comparison table.
• Penn State Criminal Justice Research Center: The Pennsylvania Interactive Gaming Assessment, Online Gambling Report 2025. Prepared for the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs. Supports the participation ranges, the Problem Gambling Measure results, the mixed-mode profile, help-seeking, the self-exclusion enrollment figures, and the helpline call series in Figure 2.
• Penn State: Online gambling participation increased in Pennsylvania in 2025, report finds. January 22, 2026. Supports the publication date and the sample size.
• The Conversation: Nearly a third of Pennsylvania gamblers are at risk of problem gambling, but few seek treatment. Gillian Russell and Glenn Sterner, March 5, 2026. The report's authors on what the ranges mean.
• Council on Compulsive Gambling of Pennsylvania: 2025 Helpline Annual Report. Supports the calendar-2025 intake total, gender and age breakdowns, and the most-cited problem formats.
• Joint State Government Commission: Sports Betting and Related Interactive Gambling in Pennsylvania%20Sports%20Betting%20REPORT%207.14.26.pdf). Staff study under House Resolution 60, July 2026. Supports every recommendation listed, including Senate Bill 265 and the Colorado data law's effective date.
• Independent Regulatory Review Commission: Regulation #125-258, Compulsive and Problem Gaming Regulation Updates. Supports the July 11, 2026 publication date and the proposed status.
• CDC Gaming: NCPG calls for default time and spending limits on Pennsylvania online gambling. Supports the National Council on Problem Gambling's opt-out request.
• National Council on Problem Gambling: FAQ. Supports the national prevalence estimate of about 1% severe and 2% to 3% mild or moderate.
• The Philadelphia Inquirer: online gambling, addiction and the helpline. Max Marin and Lizzie Mulvey, December 10, 2025. Supports the Nielsen ad-spend figure for Philadelphia and the Caron inpatient numbers.
• SBC Americas: Campaign for Fairer Gambling gets US-focused relaunch and Vixio: Campaign for Fairer Gambling targets US responsible gambling policies. Support the campaign's funding by Derek Webb and its retention of Doura-Schawohl Consulting for state-level work.
• 58 Pa. Code § 814a.2. The Pennsylvania rule requiring deposit, spend, wager and time limits, with decreases effective by the next login.
• Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board: self-exclusion enrollment and Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs: request voluntary self-exclusion. Support the separate lists and online enrollment.
• Pennsylvania Capital-Star: GOP State Sen.-elect Joe Picozzi will represent Philly district and Rep. Ben Sanchez: Biography. Support the legislators' parties and districts.