Virginia Gambling Treatment Demand Climbs 36% as Betting Expands

Demand for Virginia's state-funded problem gambling treatment network rose 36 percent in early 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, a surge its director attributes partly to better outreach and partly to a betting market that has expanded faster than the safety net built around it.

The figures come from the Virginia Partnership for Gambling and Health, a nonprofit that has run the state's treatment services since 2022. Virginia legalized sports betting and opened the door to casino gambling in selected cities in 2020, and the demand for help followed.

The fund that pays for treatment

The partnership draws on a share of the Problem Gambling Treatment and Support Fund, which is financed by a percentage of the taxes collected from casinos and sports betting operators as well as other sources. The Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services oversees the fund.

Carolyn Hawley, a professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Counseling at Virginia Commonwealth University, runs the partnership and also serves as president of the Virginia Council on Problem Gambling. She said the state had a backlog of people who could not find care long before the recent expansion.

"We believed that with gambling expansion, that we would see more people developing problems," Hawley said. "And we also knew that we had this huge onslaught of individuals who, for years, were never able to get treatment in the state of Virginia."

The partnership was built to move people quickly into treatment and recovery services, and to pay for care when callers cannot afford it. It also funds workforce development, since demand for clinicians trained in gambling disorder long outpaced supply.

Peers take the first call

The network's front door is a peer. Matt Britt, a certified peer support specialist who is himself in recovery, coordinates the partnership's Region 1, covering cities including Harrisonburg and Charlottesville. Anyone who calls 1-800-GAMBLER in Virginia is routed to the program, where the first conversation is with someone who has lived through a similar problem rather than a clinician or a call-center script.

Lisa Cochran, who coordinates the partnership's Northern Virginia region and works statewide as a peer recovery specialist, described the practical help that follows: financial counseling, support for spouses and parents, and a free one-year subscription to software that blocks access to gambling sites and apps. Cochran is also in long-term recovery, which she said changes how callers hear the offer.

Who is reaching out

The largest share of people seeking help is between 35 and 44 years old. Hawley said the group that gets less attention is older adults, whose gambling looks different in a world of round-the-clock access. The partnership is studying that population with the Virginia Center on Aging at VCU and researchers at Virginia Tech, trying to understand how retirees gamble now and how to tailor outreach to them.

Younger people remain a concern for a different reason. Hawley said sports wagering has become normalized for them, with advertisements arriving constantly on phones and during broadcasts.

"People often don't think of gambling as being a risky behavior. Not like they do with alcohol and substances," she said. "What we're finding too is that for many individuals, especially when we're talking about sports wagering in young people, they have access to these commercials 24/7. It's so normalized."

Rising demand, ambiguous cause

Hawley said more people reaching out is not automatically bad news — some of the increase reflects years of work to make help visible and easier to use. But she cautioned against reading the whole rise as awareness.

"We have to acknowledge that gambling related problems may also be increasing," she said. "And we know the gambling environment has changed dramatically here in Virginia in a very short period of time."

That is the tension the state's treatment network is now working inside. Virginia has continued to expand legal gambling while its counselors and peer specialists try to keep up with the consequences, a pattern playing out nationally as more states legalize sports betting and online wagering and then confront the treatment bill that follows.

For families weighing whether a relative's betting has crossed into addiction, the network's advice is not to wait for a crisis. The helpline, financial counseling and blocking tools are free, and the people answering are in recovery themselves.