Gen Z Investors Treat Sports Betting as Financial Plan
(Bloomberg) — Sports betting is increasingly competing with traditional investing for younger Americans’ attention, with more than a quarter of Gen Z investors saying they see gambling on sports as part of their long-term financial strategy, according to a survey by personal finance platform Betterment.
About 26% of Gen Z investors born between 1997 and 2007 said they treat sports betting as a deliberate, ongoing component of their financial plans, according to an online survey of 1,000 U.S. retail investors published Wednesday. That’s compared with about 14% of millennials (born between 1981 and 1996), 6% of Gen X (born 1965 to 1980) and 1% of baby boomers (born before 1965).
More than half of young investors said they had redirected money originally earmarked for investing into sports betting over the past year, with 14% saying they do so multiple times a month. Only about one-third of Gen Z respondents said they don’t participate in sports betting at all, compared with 63% of investors across the four generations surveyed.
The results underscore how the rapid expansion of legal sports betting and prediction markets is reshaping the ways younger adults think about building wealth, increasingly competing for discretionary dollars that might otherwise flow into retirement accounts or brokerage portfolios.
“When a prediction market or sportsbook starts to feel like a retirement strategy, we have a problem,” said Betterment Chief Executive Officer Sarah Levy in a statement. “These products are designed to keep people seeking the next quick score, not to help them build toward the next decade.”
In recent years, state-regulated sports gambling in the US has expanded into an almost $17 billion industry, while the growth of prediction markets has also been explosive. Robinhood Markets Inc., which built its brand around making stock trading accessible to younger investors, launched prediction markets inside its app in 2025 and said the business has become the firm’s fastest-growing unit in the company’s history.
As housing affordability worsens and living costs continue to rise, traditional wealth-building milestones such as buying a home feel more elusive for a lot of younger adults. Many who feel financially behind are looking to high-risk, speculative areas such as prediction markets, sports betting and crypto to reach their financial goals faster, according to a Northwestern Mutual Planning & Progress study this year.
Read More: Gen Z Traders Go for Broke in Pursuit of a New American Dream
When it comes to shaping a financial strategy, the Betterment survey found that 56% of investors rely on their own research and judgement — more than on any other single source of guidance. Self-reliance climbed from 40% among Gen Z respondents to 69% among boomers.
About one in three participants in the Betterment survey said they trusted artificial intelligence for financial advice. Of those, 53% said AI has influenced a financial decision they otherwise wouldn’t have made, including 48% of all Gen Z respondents.
To contact the author of this story:
Zijia Song in New York at [email protected]
