The Indicator from Planet Money - For a lot of Gen Z, gambling is investing

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

Why are more than half of Gen Zers using investment dollars for sports gambling? It’s been eight years since sports betting became widely legal. Today we look at its impact on a new generation of sports bettors and efforts to curb gambling’s more harmful effects. Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.Your Next Listen — Prediction markets are threatening national security. Who's gonna fix it?Connect with The Indicator — Sign up for The Indicator’s weekly newsletter! — Buy the Planet Money book — Find our socials, YouTube and more! — For sponsor-free episodes, subscribe to NPR+ Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

NPR. The line between investing and gambling is blurry now. Yeah, get this. In the past year, more than half of Gen Z say they've taken dollars intended for investing and put it towards sports gambling. And you can understand why sports betting seems like easy money when many sports betting commercials advertise hundreds of dollars in free bets just for making a small deposit.

All customers get a profit boost every NBA playoff game. The new customer spent $5 and get $300 and both. bonus bets if you win. New customers turn five bucks into 200 instantly in bonus bets. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Ricky Mulvey. And I'm Adrian Ma. The federal ban on sports betting was struck down eight years ago.

And we're just now learning the effects on younger people. Today in the show, we take a look at what ubiquitous gambling advertising has done to Gen Z. And how one state government is starting to put up guardrails. That's after the break. For some people, sports betting is more than entertainment. They're trying to make real money with it. In a recent survey, about a quarter of Gen Z said they view sports betting is a high-risk investment strategy or a way to accelerate some kind of goal.

Gen Z is anyone aged around 18 to 29. I think, you know, number one, it's not good. That's Dan Egan, vice president of behavioral science and investing at betterment. They studied the relationship different generations have with investing and gambling. And we got some of the numbers you heard from their recent poll. I have friends who like, I don't know, collecting cars, but they're honest about the fact that that car, they're not making money on it.

It's a hobby. They enjoy it. They enjoy looking at the car. I think the dangerous aspect is when we start confusing our hobbies for investing. Dan says one reason why so many members of Gen Z are using investing dollars for gambling is overconfidence. Like, I watch a ton of basketball. I can spot a winner.

And also, some people in younger generations feel this economy just isn't working for them. So I think that's one of the drivers is the idea. that in order to get ahead, just like doing my job, saving regularly, and focusing on my career isn't going to be enough, I have to have some big financial wins. But this isn't true across the board. Are you Gen Z? Yes. Sam Muscarra is a 27-year-old incoming PhD student at the University of Michigan.

And to be clear, he is three years younger than me, so we are not talking about an alien population here, Adrian. Sam used to bet on basketball, and he saw the ads promising hundreds of dollars and free bets for just a small deposit. And one of Sam's co-workers said, hey, if you sign up for a sports betting account, then I get a reward too. So he was like, if you join,

there's this promotion going on, and I figured it was like five bucks. The NBA pre-season was just starting, so I figured it'd be something to try. Hmm, why does this feel like a after-school special in the making? Sam says he'd use just about any platform that had a bonus. Bet MGM, fan duel, even the old ESPN platform.

And he says that he never bet more money than he was willing to lose. But worries about people even younger than him, Gen Alpha. He taught high schoolers. I was seeing economically disadvantaged students. Like they would tell me, like, this is an easy bet. Or like, this is like an easy way to make money. He says that some students would find an adult to sign them up for a sports betting account and start playing. These are 16-year-old kids.

They did not have the self-control to say, I'll only use the promotion money. I hear kids talking like they're putting up like $200 their money on a random like basketball game. And to be clear, we're just talking about the sports books here like Fandall and Draft Kings, not prediction markets. That's a slightly different beast. Yeah, and we've reported on how prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi can advertise to vulnerable people. You can find a link to that in the show notes. State governments are starting to react to the negative effects of sports betting, like addiction. Colorado just passed a new law that introduced new rules for sports betting companies.

For example, no more depositing money with a credit card. If you want to gamble, you can't take out debt. Matt Ball is a Democratic state senator in Colorado. He co-sponsored the bill with a Republican colleague, Byron Pelton. Matt says he's not banning sports gambling. In fact, he's gambled himself. I've bet on sports before. I've been the commissioner of a fantasy league for about 15 years.

But he sees issues with Gen Z and gambling, specifically young men. a couple of constituents came to talk with them about it. And that led to a lot more conversations with, you know, everyone from mothers who had sons come home from college, having put, you know, $15,000 on the credit card in one night to national experts in problem gambling. Matt is worried about sports betting is a public health issue. Yeah, and problem gambling is associated with more bankruptcies, loan defaults, domestic violence, and suicides. So, Matt and Byron's big eye. idea? Add some friction. Limit the ways that sports books can reach their customers. Colorado became the first state, where sports betting is allowed, to ban sports books from

sending customers push notifications on their phones and text messages. Reminders like, hey, looks like a game is on. Want to bet? Another part of their law is limiting the number of deposits that a customer can make in a single day. That number is now six. And at first, I thought this sounded kind of nuts. Customers can always move to another sports book, find ways around it. But Matt explained why he wanted to limit the number of times gamblers could add money to their accounts in just one day. When you have a problem, you might set a budget, I've got $100, I'm going to bet it this weekend. You blow through that. Hey, I got to make it back. You deposit $200, right? You lose that. You deposit $400. You just keep chasing your losses. One thing that we want to measure is, how effective is that?

Ultimately, this bill is a test. Would a deposit limit even make a difference? I'd be the first to admit, we don't have any data. So in some sense, like, we're kind of guessing here. You rarely hear lawmakers just say we're kind of guessing with a law, Adrian. I mean, I guess it speaks to just how novel this situation is. They're kind of taking the spaghetti at the wall approach to bill writing. Matt and Byron's bill is a rare bipartisan agreement to find some solutions for a real problem.

We had everyone from, you know, organizations that care about mental health and care about kids to, you know, groups on their religious right who have a, you know, fundamental objection to gambling, who were some of the same groups that opposed the legalization of gambling back in 2019. Colorado signed the bill into law this summer, and Matt says legislators in other states are starting to reach out to them. At least 10 other states don't allow betters to make deposits with a credit card like Colorado, a number that's growing. Dan Egan from Betterment, the behavioral finance guy, he says there may be another optimistic angle. I feel like every generation lives in a new context that was different than the previous one's context when they were that age. And it's entirely possible what we're seeing is just a new coming of age story about how people engage with this stuff. As generations grow older, they may realize that sports betting is not easy money or any kind of investment strategy. Dan pointed a research on day trading in the stock market, which should be a new.

you could argue is adjacent to gambling. Like, traders are trying to make money from quick swings in the market. The research found that most day traders generally quit after losing money for a couple of years. Maybe it's an expensive education, but hopefully they will learn. Losing money consistently can get old, and some people in younger generations already understand the game without losing money. Like Sam, our former Gen Z sports gambler, he says he took the promotion money, bet on some games, and then cashed out.

I never bet any of my own money, though. That felt like a good trap that I didn't want to get into. I won probably over like $1,000. Not anything like crazy, but it's still like, it was fun. Since when is $1,000 not a lot of money? I feel like I could have some fun with a grand. Oh, Ricky, don't fall into the trap. Take the bonus and run.

This episode was produced by Cooper Katz McKim and engineered by Travis Hagen and Sina LaFredo. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Julia Ritchie edited this episode. Kate Cuncanon is our show's editor, and The Indicator is a production of NPR.