Who This Follows
The Survivors. The Anchor. The Defectors.
Public-record biographies of the people at the center of this story. Every detail sourced from court filings, published reporting, and on-record testimony.
The Survivor
Andrew Douglas
Former college baseball player. On the record with Rolling Stone and CBS."In the hospital, where I was hooked up to a bunch of IVs, they turned the NBA Finals on and gave me my phone; I gambled away my last $100."
Andrew Douglas was a college baseball player before sports betting consumed his life. He accumulated gambling debts he could not pay and attempted suicide. He survived.
In the hospital, recovering, staff turned the NBA Finals on and handed him back his phone. He opened FanDuel and gambled away his last $100 from the hospital bed.
Douglas subsequently spoke on the record under his own name with Rolling Stone and appeared on CNN and CBS. His story opens this film because it is the clearest possible statement of what the system is designed to do: not to stop when a user hits bottom, but to follow him there.
Source: Rolling Stone, "There's Now a Casino in Everyone's Pocket. For Some Young Men, It's a Near-Fatal Gamble" by Paul Solotaroff and Eli Senor, October 12, 2025.
The Plaintiff
Terry Thompson
Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Named plaintiff, PHAI v. DraftKings et al.Terry Thompson, a Philadelphia-area finance executive, wagered more than $22 million on FanDuel and DraftKings between October 2020 and 2025. He lost approximately $1.8 million across the two platforms: roughly $1.52 million on FanDuel and $336,000 on DraftKings.
When Thompson tried to slow down, his assigned FanDuel VIP host, Bryttanni Morgan, contacted him hundreds of times. She sent him a $500 bottle of Champagne and free tickets to Philadelphia Eagles, Flyers, and Sixers games. She called it an emergency when he tried to walk away. The comps and outreach were not exceptional treatment. They were standard practice for high-volume accounts.
Thompson took out second and third mortgages on his home. He contemplated suicide. In February 2026, he voluntarily checked himself into a psychiatric facility.
Thompson is now one of two named plaintiffs, alongside Christopher Sage of Delaware County, in a product liability lawsuit filed March 24, 2026, by the Public Health Advocacy Institute in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County. The complaint alleges the sportsbook apps are "unreasonably dangerous products intentionally designed to maximize addiction." Defendants include DraftKings, FanDuel, Genius Sports, the National Football League, and named VIP hosts including Bryttanni Morgan.
Sources: PHAI press release, March 24, 2026; Philadelphia Inquirer, March 30, 2026; Insurance Journal, March 27, 2026; Popular Info, March 30, 2026; Bettors Insider, April 5, 2026. Case No. 260303384.
The Anchor
Harry Levant
Director of Gambling Policy, Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University School of Law. Age 62.Harry Levant is a former Philadelphia criminal-defense attorney who lost his law license and nearly his life to a personal gambling disorder. He is now the Director of Gambling Policy at the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University School of Law, and the leading public-health voice in the United States on gambling addiction.
Levant testifies approximately 40 weeks per year before state legislatures. He is the person legislators call when they need to understand the public-health dimensions of sports betting. He is, in the language of documentary filmmaking, the Jeffrey Wigand of this story: the insider-turned-advocate who can explain the system from inside and out.
On May 20, 2026, Levant testified as a witness before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Technology, and Data Privacy at the hearing titled "No Sure Bets: Protecting Sports Integrity in America." It was the first time any Senate body had directly addressed prediction markets and sports wagering together.
Sources: Rolling Stone, October 12, 2025; Philadelphia Inquirer, "U.S. Senate to examine sports gambling's mental health crisis," May 19, 2026; Senate Commerce Committee press release, April 2026.
The Fight
The Legislators and Advocates
The people trying to stop it.Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) introduced the Banning Event Trading on Sensitive Operations and Federal Functions (BETS OFF) Act in March 2026, to ban wagering on government actions, terrorism, war, assassination, and events where individuals know or control the outcome.
Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) reintroduced the SAFE Bet Act in March 2025. The bill would establish federal minimum standards for sports betting, including bans on advertising during live events, AI-targeted microbets, and bonus-bet language.
The Public Health Advocacy Institute, based at Northeastern University School of Law, filed the landmark March 2026 lawsuit and provided Harry Levant as a witness to Congress. PHAI has been the primary institutional force treating this as a public-health crisis rather than a regulatory question.
Gambling with Lives is a British charity established in 2018 by families bereaved by gambling-related suicide. UK Parliament records document hundreds of gambling-related suicides annually in Britain. The organization's model, bereaved families as advocates, is directly relevant to the American story now unfolding.
Sources: Sen. Chris Murphy press release, March 17, 2026; Casino.org, March 12, 2025; UK Parliament Hansard, December 2, 2025 and January 15, 2026.
The Defectors
Former VIP Hosts and Account Managers
The people who made the late-night calls.The PHAI complaint names individual VIP hosts as defendants alongside the corporate entities. Several former VIP hosts and account managers from FanDuel and DraftKings are named in active lawsuit filings.
These are the people whose job it was to call a heavy loser at his lowest moment with an offer he would find hard to refuse. Free tickets. Free Champagne. A reminder that the app still needed him. The job existed because it worked. The question the lawsuit and the film both ask is the same: who designed the job, and what did they know when they designed it.
Source: PHAI complaint, March 24, 2026, as cited in Philadelphia Inquirer, March 30, 2026, and Popular Info, March 30, 2026.