What’s Going on with 1-800-Gambler?

If you're confused about what’s going on with the nation’s largest gambling helpline, you’re not alone, and operators are standing by. But sadly, after Sep. 29, there may be no one to take your call, as that is the court-ordered deadline for the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) to cease all use of the much advertised Lifeline.

While the NCPG has promised to file an emergency stay to allow it to continue operations while the case is further appealed or sent to arbitration, the real question has to be how did we get here?

We have to go all the way back to 1979. A study by the New Jersey Health Department found something like 175,000 New Jersey residents showed signs of compulsive gambling, mostly stemming from the casinos in Atlantic City, which had opened their doors just a year earlier.

Believing that it had to act, the Health Department set up initial funding for a private nonprofit organization in 1982, which was to provide education, information, and referral services to people experiencing gambling-related problems. The organization was named the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey (CCGNJ).

In a rather prescient move, it acquired the 1-800-Gambler number in 1984 following the breakup of AT&T, which allowed 800 numbers to become much cheaper and more widely available, but most importantly to our story, able to be used nationally, instead of just regionally.

They received 694 calls that first year and operated on a $50,000 budget. Today, that number has grown to hundreds of thousands, and 1.4 million dollars, mostly from the NCPG, has been spent on the helpline alone over the last couple of years. That phone number appears on the back of lottery tickets, is posted in casinos, displayed at online sportsbooks, and is available in all 50 states and some territories.

And that is the problem. New Jersey’s CCGNJ is an affiliate, or chapter, of the national NCPG, which was founded in New York in the early 1970s. It functions almost like a trade association. The NCPG works with only one problem gambling nonprofit in each state. In this case, the CCGNJ serves as their sole representative in New Jersey.

The NCPG provides development resources, training, networking access with other affiliates, and a much larger voice than they might have otherwise when it comes to national problem gambling policy.

In that sense, it’s more like a franchise. They are financially independent and maintain local autonomy but get all the perks of a national organization. And all of this was fine until PASPA came along and overturned the apple cart.

After 2018, as sports betting legalization swept through state capitals, call volume on what had become THE national helpline exploded. Other states had long-standing helpline problems of their own, but it was becoming increasingly clear that a national problem demanded a national solution. And many of these state helplines were also ill-funded or not equipped to handle call volumes at this level.

In 2021, the NCPG reported that calls increased 43%, and texts went up another 60%. Chat volume was up a staggering 84%. A year later, they would step in to help manage the CCGNJ’s 1-800-Gambler number as it became the de facto resolution to getting a national helpline number up and running.

For the next three years, things went smoothly. The NCPG paid CCGNJ $150,000 a year for the licensing rights, and provided about $1.4 million in annual operating budget for the project, which includes a couple of dozen call centers, resources about problem gambling in well over 100 different languages, and the ability to handle calls, texts or chats 24/7.

But when the three-year licensing deal expired in the spring of 2025, things got messy. CCGNJ didn’t feel they were being given enough support and wanted their number back. The NCPG believed that they had built out national infrastructure for what they increasingly see as a national problem, and that the CCGNJ lacked the ability to properly staff or fund their vision by itself. 

It’s been a summer of challenging court cases and arbitration, but where we are now is clear. As of Sep. 29, the ability of 1-800-Gambler to help all of its callers may be in doubt, and that could mean serious repercussions for the hundreds of thousands of callers who depend on it.

What started four decades ago as a way to help those impacted by the first gambling boom to wash over America outside of Nevada has become bedrock infrastructure in the national fight against problem gambling. 

And brings front of mind the real question, as legalized gambling continues to expand, and we begin to discuss the future of iGaming in many more states, can patchwork state organizations truly handle the onslaught of many tens of thousands of people with serious needs, or is a national organization with national funding needed?

It’s ironic that two organizations, with the same goal and the same desire to help those with gambling-related issues, would put those people’s well-being at stake over a dispute about money and power, but that is exactly what may happen in the interim as this case comes to a head.