betttr/gambling-harm-open-data

Mirror of the canonical repository github.com/betttr-data/gambling-harm-data, release 2026.10.3. Cite the concept DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22857767. Column dictionaries live in the repository's data/schema/. Corrections go to the GitHub repository.

Gambling Harm Open Data

Five machine-readable datasets on gambling harm and gambling recovery in the United States, published together, corrected and updated as sources change, free, with no registration and no rate limit.

Landing page: https://betttr.net/data/ Current release: 2026.10.3 — 15 October 2026 (records notes for MN, ND, VT; no value or tier changes; see CHANGELOG) Contact and corrections: support@betttr.net

Every source this project draws on is a PDF. If this were also a PDF it would have added nothing. The CSV is the point.

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What's in it

File	Rows	What it is	Refresh
data/gambling-harm-index.csv	51	What every U.S. state and DC publishes about gambling harm, plus the one genuinely comparable 51-jurisdiction series that exists — NCPG helpline contacts and rate per 100k.	Continuous, as sources change
data/sportsbook-rg-tools.csv	14	Which responsible-gambling tools each major U.S. sportsbook and DFS operator publishes — limits, cool-off, self-exclusion, closure path, and the navigation to reach them. Every claim carries the operator URL it came from.	Quarterly
data/recovery-glossary.csv	125	Gambling-recovery and gambling-industry terms with a plain definition, a stigma-preferred phrasing, and a source or an explicit unsourced marker.	As needed, reviewed quarterly
data/quit-gambling-apps.csv	107	A dated panel of quit-gambling apps on the U.S. iOS App Store — release and update dates, rating counts, classification.	Periodic, each pull dated
data/self-exclusion-programs.csv	38	How to enroll in self-exclusion by jurisdiction, plus the multi-state NVSEP and the states it reaches.	Quarterly

Each file has a plain-language column dictionary in data/schema/ documenting every column, its units, its missing-value markers, and its known gaps. Machine-readable field schemas for all five are in datapackage.json (Frictionless Data Package v2).

Stable raw URLs

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/betttr-data/gambling-harm-data/main/data/gambling-harm-index.csv
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/betttr-data/gambling-harm-data/main/data/sportsbook-rg-tools.csv
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/betttr-data/gambling-harm-data/main/data/recovery-glossary.csv
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/betttr-data/gambling-harm-data/main/data/quit-gambling-apps.csv
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/betttr-data/gambling-harm-data/main/data/self-exclusion-programs.csv

main always points at the newest release. For a frozen copy, use a tag: replace main with v2026.10.0, or cite the version DOI.

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How to cite

APA 7

Betttr LLC. (2026). Gambling Harm Open Data (Version 2026.10.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23141193

To cite the dataset in general rather than one release, use the concept DOI, which always resolves to the latest version:

Betttr LLC. (2026). Gambling Harm Open Data [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22857767

BibTeX

@dataset{betttr_gambling_harm_open_data_2026,
  author    = {{Betttr LLC}},
  title     = {Gambling Harm Open Data},
  year      = {2026},
  month     = {10},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  version   = {2026.10.0},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.23141193},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23141193}
}

Citing one file. Name it, so a reader can find the same numbers:

Betttr LLC. (2026). Gambling Harm Index [Data file]. In Gambling Harm Open Data (Version 2026.9.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22857768

In a news story, this is enough: Gambling Harm Open Data, Betttr LLC, September 2026 — with a link to https://betttr.net/data/. Journalists do not need to ask permission, and do not need to email us first.

GitHub's "Cite this repository" button reads CITATION.cff and will generate both formats for you.

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Citing the helpline layer

NCPG attribution note (requested by NCPG Public Affairs, 2026-10-02; include wherever helpline contact volumes from this file are cited): "NCPG reporting includes traffic to 1-800-GAMBLER from June 1, 2023, through September 30, 2025, when it served as the National Problem Gambling Helpline. Effective October 1, 2025, traffic to 1-800-GAMBLER is no longer included in NCPG reporting. As a result, changes in reported contact volume after this date reflect a change in reporting methodology and should not be interpreted as a decrease in overall help-seeking activity." The CY2025 column in this file therefore covers a transition year; year-over-year comparisons involving 2025 and later carry this caveat.

License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) — full text in LICENSE. SPDX: CC-BY-4.0.

Free to use, including commercially, including in a product, including by a competitor. The only condition is credit and a link.

Why this license. Most of what is in these files is factual data, and in the United States facts are not copyrightable — so a data license here is closer to a norm and a courtesy than an enforceable claim. Given that, we picked the option that every reuser, repository and journal data policy already recognizes without needing a paragraph of explanation, and that covers the contents of the tables rather than only their structure. We want the data used. Credit is the point, and credit comes from the DOI and the citation block above far more than from the license text. If attribution is inconvenient for you, take the data anyway and cite us when you can.

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Provenance

Dataset	Primary sources
Gambling Harm Index	NCPG's annual National Problem Gambling Helpline report, Appendix A (prepared by the Omni Institute) for the helpline layer — one publisher, one method, all 51 jurisdictions. State gaming regulators, lotteries, behavioral-health agencies and state councils for the state layer, with a per-row URL in state_source_url.
Sportsbook RG Tools	Operator-published help centres and responsible-gambling hubs, retrieved 2026-Q3. Every claim column has a matching *_source column.
Recovery Glossary	NCPG and state regulators → SAMHSA and APA → peer-reviewed literature → recognized recovery-language references. Per-row in source_url.
Quit-Gambling Apps	Apple iTunes Search API, U.S. iOS App Store, pulled 2026-09-20.
Self-Exclusion Programs	State regulator and agency pages, plus the NVSEP program site.

Rules we hold ourselves to:

• No estimating, modelling, imputing or interpolating. Every number is a published number with a URL.
• No composite score. There is no single "harm number" for a state and there will not be one, because the inputs are not comparable enough to earn it.
• No ranking on figures that are not comparable. The state-published layer is never ranked.
• No news articles as sources. Press-only figures with no primary source are excluded from the published-value columns entirely. We do not launder an article into a dataset.
• Missing means missing, and says which kind. N/A never means zero and never means we did not look. Each file documents its markers in data/schema/.

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Funding

Produced by Betttr LLC, maker of a recovery app; no operator or affiliate money.

Betttr LLC is a Delaware limited liability company based in Sherman Oaks, California. Its revenue comes from people who use its app, and from nothing else. It has never accepted money, sponsorship, data, advertising, placement or in-kind support from a sportsbook, a casino, a lottery, a gambling operator, an affiliate marketer, a gambling trade association, or anyone acting for them, and it will not. If that ever changes it will be disclosed here and on https://betttr.net/data/ before the next release, and the change will be dated.

We are in our own data. The Betttr app is a row in quit-gambling-apps.csv, counted by the same rule as every other app, with no adjustment and no favorable placement. Any analysis of that file that ranks apps should say the publisher is in the ranking.

We have a stake in gambling harm being taken seriously. That is a reason to check our arithmetic, and it is why every number here carries the URL it came from.

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Corrections policy

Releases are permanent and are never silently edited.

• Corrections are appended, not substituted. A corrected release keeps the original value recoverable through the prior tag and the prior version DOI, and carries a dated note naming what changed and why.
• Every correction appears in CHANGELOG.md, newest first, with the release it affects, and in the running log at https://betttr.net/harm-index/corrections/.
• Material corrections are flagged at the top of the affected release and in the next release's notes.
• Anyone can send one, to support@betttr.net. State agencies, councils, regulators and operators who believe we have their number, scope or period wrong are the most valuable senders, and we correct on their word plus a source.
• We publish corrections we find ourselves the same way we publish corrections we are sent.
• If a figure turns out to be unsupportable rather than merely wrong, we remove it and say that we removed it. We would rather have a hole with an explanation than a number we cannot stand behind.
• self-exclusion-programs.csv corrections ship out of band. A dead enrollment URL can send someone in a bad moment to a dead end; those do not wait for the quarterly release.

A method change is dated, listed, and never applied retroactively to a published release.

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Refresh cadence

Dataset	Cadence	When
Gambling Harm Index	Continuous	As soon as a state's data changes or a correction arrives
Quit-Gambling Apps	Periodic	Each App Store pull is dated
Sportsbook RG Tools	Quarterly	Reviewed each quarter
Self-Exclusion Programs	Quarterly	Reviewed each quarter
Recovery Glossary	As needed	Reviewed quarterly

Updates follow the sources, not a calendar. A row changes when its source publishes something new, an agency corrects it, or a re-audit finds a series we missed — and the release ships that day. Most underlying sources are annual, so most rows change rarely. Every change is dated in the CHANGELOG with its source and credit.

Every release is tagged (v2026.9.0), archived on Zenodo, and gets its own version DOI. Nothing is overwritten.

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Contributing

• Corrections and source tips: email support@betttr.net, or open an issue. A source URL makes it fast.
• A state we've missed: self-exclusion-programs.csv now classifies all 51 jurisdictions; any field marked UNVERIFIED in notes is a gap, and an issue with a regulator URL closes it fast.
• Pull requests to data/*.csv are not merged. The files are generated from a sourcing process, not edited by hand; a PR would be overwritten at the next release. Send the correction instead and it will land in the next tagged version with your credit in the changelog if you want it.

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If gambling is a problem for you

The National Problem Gambling Helpline™ is 1-800-MY-RESET (dial 1-800-697-3738) — call or text, 24/7, free and confidential — or chat at 1800myreset.org.

It is not a crisis line. For a crisis, call 911 or 988.

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Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

Version	Date	Summary
2026.9.0	2026-09-21	First public release. Five datasets, 309 rows, Frictionless descriptor, Zenodo DOI.