Jesse Welles, Gen Z’s Bob Dylan, Takes Aim at Sports Betting

Posted on: February 22, 2025, 12:45h.

Last updated on: February 22, 2025, 02:25h.

Corey Levitan Read More

Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.

Sports betting has a vocal new enemy. In addition to the National Council on Problem Gambling and the Family Research Council, the burgeoning new industry now has Jesse Welles to contend with.

Jesse Welles’ sandpapery protest voice is all over Instagram and TiktTok. (Image: wellesmusic.com)

This social-media Bob Dylan is a folk singer from Ozark, Ark. who sings the blues about modern societal issues with a uniquely Gen Z perspective.

Previously, the 30-year-old Ozark, Ark. resident trained his guitar-picking crosshairs on the Israel-Hamas War (“War Isn’t Murder”), corporate America’s exploitation of workers (“Walmart”), and the murder of its United Health care CEO Brian Thompson (“United Health.”)

Last month, Welles decided to take on sports betting. Uploaded to his 1.2 million Instagram followers last month, “Sports Betting” now has nearly 200K likes. Here are its most biting lyrics…

A freeze frame from Welles’ Instagram hit “Sports Betting.” (Image: Insstagram)

Got a money-draining game in my pocket

More addictive than cocaine but I can’t stop it.

They told me I was smart, they wouldn’t lie to me.

You know the dealer’s rules, the first game for free.

Good people going broke

Life savings getting spent

Yeah the odds are good but these goods ain’t it.

You know that 20% of gambling addicts attempt.”

That last lyric references research consistently showing that gambling addiction has the highest suicide attempt rate among addictive disorders. Studies peg it between 16% and 24%. That’s higher than the suicide rate among opioid and alcohol addicts, which is between 10-15%.

A 2002 study in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that 17% of 342 treatment-seeking pathological gamblers had attempted suicide, with 32% reporting ideation (Petry & Kiluk).

Welles Spring

At 11, Welles used money he’d saved to buy a guitar at Walmart that became his near-constant companion.

“I brought it to school, to the library,” he told the New York Times.

It was at that library, in nearby Fayetteville, that he discovered Smithsonian Folkways’ “Anthology of American Folk Music” and Bob Dylan’s 1962 self-titled debut album.

In 2023, Welles’ father had a heart attack “and something just snaped in me,” he said. “I started singing the news. It’s a way to make sense of what’s going on around me.”

Welles is currently on a tour of US (and a couple of European) theaters that is, quite literally, sold out. Twenty-five of his next 27 gigs have a button on his website inviting fans to “join waitlist.”