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

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

Godwin Oluponmile

Tue, August 18, 2026 at 3:30 PM GMT+3 4 min read

Around one in four Gen Z investors now prefer to choose sports betting as their primary plan for building wealth — and the NFL season starts in a few weeks.

Findings from Betterment's fourth annual Retail Investor Survey show that 26% of Gen Z investors want to bet on sports consistently and even see betting as a major part of their subsequent financial plan.

Must Read

• Jeff Bezos backs a platform that lets anyone invest in rental homes for as little as $100 — 6 ways to build wealth like a landlord without actually being one

• Dave Ramsey warns nearly 50% of Americans are making 1 big Social Security mistake. Here's what it is and 3 simple steps to fix it ASAP

• The tax breaks in Trump's 'big beautiful bill' expire after 2028. Here are 4 moves to make before the window closes

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 saysthat 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.

Robert knows outright that he's gambling, he said. He just thinks he's more disciplined about it than most people.

A study posted to SSRN looked at accounts on the prediction market Polymarket, a close cousin of the sportsbook, and found about 69% of them had lost money. The winnings were heavily concentrated, with 77% of the profits going to the top 1% of users. For every Kosciuk, in other words, there are a lot of people quietly funding him.

How to bet without touching your retirement

Trouble often starts when your retirement fund and betting money come from the same account.

If you enjoy betting, treat it like any other night out. Pick a monthly amount you could lose without it hurting, keep it in a separate account and stop when it's gone.

Then set your 401(k) or IRA contribution to come out automatically on payday, so it's spoken for before you ever open the app. If you're already behind on saving, that one automatic transfer will do more for you than any parlay.

Enjoy the season but don't let betting double as your retirement plan.

This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com under the title: Betting retirement on the big game? Gen Z investors are gambling on sports as a financial plan

This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.