PSAB NA: “There’s an incredibly unique culture here in North America”
EPIC Global Solutions first brought the Pro Sport Advisory Board to life in 2021 to identify best practice in preventing gambling-related harm in sport on a worldwide scale, but the unique structure of both elite sport and wagering practises in North America mean that the time has come for the PSAB to form a specific group for this region.
Throughout this run of features introducing the seven inaugural board members who are forming the Pro Sport Advisory Board North America to look at the issue through a US and Canadian lens in particular, we have introduced specialists who know the sports landscape of the region – and the challenges it faces – inside out, and in Dr Jeremy Bettle Ph.D, the board gains the expert inside of a world-renowned expert in human performance and vitality, who has applied his experience to teams in three of the major leagues.
Bettle brings nearly 20 years of experience helping elite athletes and high performers achieve unprecedented results. As a leader in high-performance sports, Jeremy has built and led multidisciplinary teams in the NBA, NHL, and MLS, collaborating to develop cutting-edge systems that optimize athlete health, performance, and injury prevention.
Notably, while leading the Toronto Maple Leafs’ performance team, he achieved an unmatched 3.5 years without a single non-contact injury—a feat that remains unparalleled today.
Now, as the co-founder of Vitality Collective, along with his wife Michelle, Jeremy is bringing his proven expertise to discerning individuals seeking tailored strategies to optimize health, prevent injuries, recover from setbacks, and extend their quality of life. Together, they have pioneered the AIM approach—Assess, Intervene, Monitor—delivering the same precision and personalization typically reserved for professional athletes to anyone committed to their well-being.
In January, Jeremy and Michelle launched The Vitality Collective Podcast, where they share powerful insights into health optimization, performance, and vitality. Jeremy is passionate about empowering individuals to take charge of their health and unlock their full potential. Whether speaking to large audiences or small groups, he excels at translating complex health strategies into actionable steps.
He took time out to explain what makes the North American sports landscape unique, the challenges he has seen athletes face – both during and post career – and how the rise of legalized gambling further changes the action needed to be taken to protect the careers of talented sports stars…
What made you want to join the Pro Sport Advisory Board North America?
“Throughout my career, all the way from working college and then when I got to the pros, I saw young men exposed to huge amounts of money for the first time in their lives with zero support. There was always a culture of gambling, and they were drawn into that particularly by people who are earning a lot more than them and can afford to gamble large sums of money.
“I saw the devastating impact it was having on young men who were earning a fabulous income but still living paycheck to paycheck. I think the mission of bringing awareness to this issue within sport is a necessary one and such an amazing project to be involved with.”
What are you hoping to bring as a member of this board?
“I’m hoping to bring a perspective across multiple environments. It’s rare that somebody’s been able to be at the college level and across three different professional sports leagues, so bringing years of experience at the elite level in multiple different cultures, I can offer a very unique perspective on the similarities and differences between the different sports leagues.
“I’ve also done an incredible amount of work on my own psychology and so being able to offer that perspective. Being someone who has done a lot of the work that’s going to be required of these young men, I think that it’s a unique perspective.”
Why do you think it’s important to create a specific North American board?
“I think there’s an incredibly unique culture here in North America with the collective bargaining agreements, with the involvement of agents, with the relationship with the clubs.
“I think it’s very important to understand all of the different competing agendas that people surrounding the athlete have. Essentially, nobody is looking out for the athlete’s best interest. I think it’s important to have a North American board with members who have been in the environment and understand the nuances.
“While there will be similarities in principle with Europe and the UK, I think that North America is a very unique market and it’s important to have people who have embodied and been in that market.”
How important is gambling harm prevention to you and your organization?
“The company that my wife Michelle and I have built since leaving sport has been about vitality and this acknowledgement that there is life through that midlife period and beyond.
“Watching young people with resources and squander them, then set themselves up for real struggles as they go forward, I think it’s incredibly important to have this education while people are young so that they can leverage this incredible opportunity that they have in their youth and create real lasting vitality and opportunity going forward into their retirement and into their later life.
“That retirement phase is so challenging on its own without the added impact of gambling addiction when those resources start to chance in depression, and that the feeling of being lost in retirement kick in. A lot of young men are not equipped with the psychological skills to be able to process those emotions in a constructive way.
“For me, the vitality of these athletes beyond the sport is really the important thing. The time being a professional athlete is going to make up such a small portion of their lives when they look back that their psychological skill set and how well adjusted they are coming out of sport is really going to determine that lifelong vitality.”
Understand the genesis of the Pro Sport Advisory Board by visiting our PSAB portal, including details of the white paper released by the Foundation Group two years ago to provide best practise guidelines for preventing gambling-related harm in sport.
