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Abstract

The legalization of sports betting following the Supreme Court's 2018 Murphy v.\ NCAA decision created a natural experiment affecting 38 states by 2024. This paper provides rigorous causal estimates of the employment effects using a staggered difference-in-differences design. Employing the Callaway-Sant'Anna estimator to address heterogeneous treatment effects across adoption cohorts, we analyze Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) data for NAICS 7132 (Gambling Industries) from 2014–2023. Contrary to industry projections of substantial job creation, we find no statistically significant effect of legalization on gambling industry employment. The overall ATT is $-56$ jobs (SE $= 336$), economically small and statistically indistinguishable from zero ($p = 0.87$). This null result is robust across estimators (TWFE: $-205$, SE $= 243$) and specifications. Pre-treatment event study coefficients strongly support parallel trends ($p = 0.92$ for joint test). These findings challenge claims that sports betting legalization is an engine of job creation and suggest policymakers should weigh other considerations when evaluating legalization.