Hartford ― With the college basketball season nearing its conclusion, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., stepped up his campaign Monday against schools that are making money by promoting sports wagering among their students.

Standing before microphones and cameras at the offices of the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling, Blumenthal said eight schools with big-time athletic programs have reportedly entered into agreements with casinos and sportsbooks seeking to entice students into online betting on sports, which is now legal in most states, including Connecticut, which prohibits wagers on in-state college teams.

The University of Connecticut, whose men’s basketball team will compete in the NCAA tournament’s season-ending Final Four on Saturday and, perhaps, in the championship game on Monday, April 3, is not among the schools Blumenthal singled out, and, according to a UConn official who testified at a legislative hearing last month, it never would be.

Regarding a potential partnership with an online gambling company, “UConn would never entertain a proposal that would allow for the direct solicitation of students,” Neal Eskin, UConn’s executive associate athletic director, told the legislature’s Higher Education and Employment Advancement Committee last month while testifying on House Bill 5232.

The bill, which the committee passed 22-0, would prohibit public colleges in the state from profiting or receiving money from a sponsor, marketing company or other entity for allowing it to directly solicit students to gamble through a website, online service, or mobile application.

Blumenthal said he has written letters to the schools with the top 50 revenue-producing men’s basketball and football programs in the country ― a total of 68 schools, some of which have lucrative programs in both men’s basketball and football ― asking whether they have signed contracts with any casinos or sportsbooks. UConn is the only school in Connecticut with a top 50 revenue-producing athletic program.

“I want to know who has these contracts,” Blumenthal said. “I want to know how much they make and what they’re doing to help counter (gambling) addiction.”

He said The New York Times brought the issue to light last November when it reported on universities that have signed deals with sports betting companies seeking to promote online gambling to students and campus communities.

“Caesars, DraftKings, FanDuel and others are going to colleges and saying, ‘If you help us market, we’ll give you a cut,’” Blumenthal said.

According to The Times, in 2021, Caesars Sportsbook offered Michigan State University a deal worth $8.4 million over five years. Louisiana State University signed a similar deal with Caesars the same year, the newspaper reported, after which the school sent an email encouraging students, including some who were under the age of 21, the legal gambling age, to place a bet.

In 2020, the University of Colorado Boulder accepted $1.6 million from a betting company to promote sports betting on campus and received an extra $30 each time someone downloaded the company’s app and used a promotional code to wager, according to the Times report.

Blumenthal, in a November letter to Caesars’ chief executive officer, Thomas Reeg, urged the company to “end its practice of targeting colleges and universities, discontinue any existing partnerships with schools, and abide by industry standards that prohibit marketing to college students.”

Blumenthal said the recent explosion of online gambling has tripled and quadrupled the number of problem gamblers. Online gambling is particularly dangerous, he said, because it can be pursued in secret.

“All the excitement about UConn (basketball), no question,” he said. “I’m not saying it (gambling) shouldn’t be legal, but there have to be restrictions. … We should be looking for signs of problem gambling.”

A major concern among advocates for problem gamblers is that the problem can lead to suicide, said Blumenthal, who repeatedly called attention to the problem gambling council’s 24-hour helpline number: 1-888-789-7777.

Valerie Tebbetts, the council’s helpline coordinator, said the number of calls to the helpline doubled soon after legal sports betting launched in Connecticut in October 2021 and increased well beyond that around the time of the Super Bowl and other major events such as college basketball tournaments.

In 2022, 8.9% of the calls came from callers under the age of 25, a “stunning” increase over the 4.7% that came from that demographic in 2021, Tebbetts said. Most of the callers under 25 are young men.

“I take many calls from parents of college kids who see the evidence that they’ve been gambling,” she said. “You used to hear about people losing $10,000 gambling. It happens all the time. But it didn’t happen on a weekend or to 22-year-olds. Now it does.”

“This is a whole new world,” Tebbetts said.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com