Gen Z Now Makes Up Nearly Half of Online Sports Betting Activity, Surveys Find

The numbers

Gen Z has become the largest group of online sports bettors in the country, according to a September report from the Bank of America Institute. The bank found Gen Z accounted for almost 50% of all online betting activity in July, during the height of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, surpassing millennials for the first time.

A separate survey of retail investors released in August by Betterment, an investment advisory platform, found 66% of Gen Z investors participate in sports betting. Two out of three young investors engage in the activity.

Cynthia Grant, vice president of clinical at Birches Health, an online therapy provider for gambling addiction recovery, told CNBC it's now "more unusual for someone not to have, for example, a Kalshi account, DraftKings" than to have one. "It's part of the experience of watching sports now," she said.

How we got here

Sports betting took off nationally after the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the federal ban on state-authorized sportsbooks. Legal sportsbooks now operate in 30 states.

Then came prediction markets. Sports-related event contracts launched on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket in early 2025, extending access into states without legal sportsbooks and to users under 21, since those platforms operate under different rules than traditional sportsbooks.

DraftKings and FanDuel management describe their products as entertainment, not investment. Prediction market platforms argue event contracts, regardless of category, are financial derivatives, not wagers. Both sides have a real stake in how regulators and the public classify what they're selling, and neither classification has been settled by a court or regulator in a way that ends the argument.

Gen Z is blurring the line itself

Whatever the platforms call it, Bank of America's survey found Gen Z is twice as likely as the general population to see sports betting as a form of investment, compared with 20% of all respondents. In Betterment's survey, 52% of Gen Z respondents admitted they've moved money originally set aside for investing into sports betting instead. Another 26% said they treat wagering as part of their long-term financial strategy.

Dan Egan, Betterment's director of behavioral finance and investing, said the blur is partly a design problem. Betting products increasingly sit right next to brokerage apps on the same phone. "It's not an asset that grows with the economy, that kind of gets better as time goes on, that has a positive expected return," Egan said of sports betting. "It's the exact opposite."

Bank of America's data backs up the financial strain angle. Households that bet online carry median deposit account balances at only 59% of what non-betting households hold. That's not proof betting causes the gap, but it's a real, measurable difference between the two groups.

Betting as a way out of debt

A survey from National Debt Relief and Wakefield Research, reported by CDC Gaming, found 65% of Gen Z and 49% of millennials who gamble regularly say they're doing it specifically to try to eliminate debt. Compare that to 39% of Gen X and just 19% of boomers. Younger generations are turning to sports betting, prediction markets, day trading and even AI chatbots as what the survey called "financial survival strategies," not hobbies.

Defenders of looser betting access argue adults should be free to spend and risk their own money as they choose, and that treating every bettor as an addict in waiting is paternalistic. That's a fair point about individual liberty. But the debt-relief survey data suggests a meaningful share of young bettors aren't betting for fun or even for thrill. They're betting because they're already underwater financially and looking for a shortcut out.

The bigger picture for young men specifically

A Fox News opinion piece drawing on Institute for Family Studies data noted that 35% of young men gamble daily or weekly, alongside other high-frequency digital habits like pornography (42% daily or weekly) and video games (86% daily or weekly). The same data found 61% of young men feel they have little control over what happens to them, even though 84% say they have ambitious plans for their future. That piece argues the fix isn't shaming young men but giving them a path toward purpose, a framing distinct from the straight financial-risk reporting in the other surveys.

No federal regulator has announced new rules specifically targeting sports-related prediction market contracts or Gen Z betting behavior as of this writing. The open question is whether state gambling regulators, who already oversee traditional sportsbooks, will move to apply similar oversight to prediction markets that currently operate under commodities rules instead of gambling law.