Surprise! Nevada is America's Most Gambling Addicted State

What is the US State that’s most addicted to gambling? The answer to this one seems pretty obvious to the layman and if you guessed Nevada, you’re right on the money.
According to a recent study by WalletHub, a financial information firm, Nevada residents are more likely than any of their American peers to succumb to the evils of problem gambling. The Silver State does, however, have some pretty serious competition from the gambling mad residents of South Dakota and Montana.
The use of the term “addicted, in the case of this particular study, is a bit misleading. WalletHub did not simply measure the number of people seeking treatment for gambling problems, but rather evaluated a set of 15 criteria that measure “gambling friendliness.”
While “Gambling Problem & Treatment” is definitely examined in the study, it only accounts for about 30 percent of a state’s overall score.
Factors that weighed more heavily included things like, Commercial & Tribal Casinos per Capita, Presence of Illegal Gambling Operations, and Legality of Daily Fantasy Sports. (In the category of casinos per capita, Nevada, South Dakota and Oklahoma scored nearly evenly.)
This broad range of categories that determined gambling friendliness is so diverse that Utah, one of just two US States with no regulated gambling, did land in the #50 spot and was merely the 48th most gambling addicted state. The final spot on the study’s rankings went to Alabama, which only hit around 13 percent of the study’s criteria.
The study drew its data from a broad swath of sources including the US Census and the American Gaming Association.