Sports betting used to be a Sunday habit, but for a growing share of Americans, and an even larger portion of Gen Z, it’s starting to look like a backup financial plan.
New research from Bank of America Institute shows that across every generation, people see prediction-market contracts as even more investment-like than sports bets. Tracking payments flowing to and from betting platforms, the bank found that customers of all generations recovered less than 75 cents for every dollar they sent in for each month this year. Gen Z recovered more than any other generation, with most getting back over 80 cents per dollar, but still fell well short of breaking even.
The bank found that one in five Americans view sports gambling as an investment tool, and for Gen Z, it’s two in five. Betting has also become a habit rather than an occasional flutter: separate survey data cited in the report found nearly a quarter of sports bettors wager daily, and another third do so weekly. Lower-income households made up the largest share of bettors by income group, at 37%, compared with 34% for middle-income and 29% for higher-income households.
First-time betting users in June and July ran more than three times January’s level, which the bank attributed to the World Cup and a wave of new prediction-market products. Prediction-market activity jumped to 27% of all legal U.S. sports-betting volume during the World Cup, up from just 9% at the start of the year.
