Betting retirement on the big game? Gen Z investors are gambling on sports as a financial plan

Only 14% of millennials want something similar, and that number falls to 6% for Gen X and 1% for baby boomers. The research surveyed 1,000 American retail investors.

Now what looks alarming here is the source of the money they’re betting. More than half of the Gen Z respondents (52%) said that at some point in the past year they took money they had planned to invest and bet it on sports instead. Among young investors more broadly, 14% said they do this several times a month.

But, about one third of Gen Z investors say they don’t bet on sports at all. Across everyone surveyed, 63% don’t.

Why young investors are treating sportsbooks like brokerages

Placing a bet itself is now easier than ever — you only need a few taps on a phone. Americans legally wagered $166.94 billion on sports last year, and sportsbooks kept $16.96 billion of that as revenue, according to the American Gaming Association. Meanwhile, Robinhood, which got a lot of young people trading stocks in the first place, added prediction markets to its app in 2025 and says that business is growing faster than anything else it has ever launched.

There’s also the stress that comes with money. Rent, as we have it, is high, wages haven’t kept up and buying a home feels out of reach for many people in their 20s. A Northwestern Mutual Planning & Progress study this year found 32% of Gen Z had either put money into prediction markets and sports betting or were considering it. Across all U.S. adults drawn to high-risk assets, three-quarters said it was because they feel financially behind. And eight in 10 Gen Z investors said they think these riskier bets can get them where they want to go faster than the traditional route.

Haley Sacks, host of the Financial Tea podcast, told CNBC a lot of young people no longer trust the usual path. To them, she said, saving slowly over decades now seems “maybe like a scam.”

However, Betterment CEO Sarah Levy doesn’t see it that way. When a sportsbook or prediction market “starts to feel like a retirement strategy, we have a problem,” she said in a statement to Yahoo Finance. In her view, these products are designed to keep users coming back for another quick win, not to help them build over 10 or 20 years.

The bettor who says he’s doing it right — and the odds against him

Robert Kosciuk, a 32-year-old from Huntington, New York, has a Robinhood account for stocks. But he told Bloomberg he’s spent more of his energy on betting this year.

He does his homework before a bet, keeps each one to $100 and says he doesn’t let emotion drive the decision. So far it’s paid off. He’s up about $2,500 in 2026, and he said his bets on the Carolina Hurricanes covered a vacation.