It’s rare to see nearly everyone — never mind everyone in the gambling world — agree on something, but that happened last week when Betterment, a self-proclaimed “trusted wealth and savings platform,” dropped a bombshell.
According to its 2026 Retail Investor Survey, 52% of Generation Z — for those who are uncs, that’s people born between 1997 and 2012 — have redirected investment money into sports betting at least once over the last year, and 26% of Gen Z treats sports betting as part of their long-term investment strategy.
People were, across the board, horrified.
Well, I have some news to share, and I trust it will make people feel better.
This study is a load of trash.
For starters, and most tellingly, and I’m going to put this in all caps so it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle, THERE IS NO WAY 52% OF GEN Z BETS ON SPORTS.
Pew puts the number at 31%, and that should be enough right there, but I’ll keep going.
First off, the study only counts Gen Z as between 1997-2007 meaning about 25% of the people aren’t even 21, the legal age to bet. Secondly, it asked 250 people in this age cohort, meaning our “52%” headline comes from 130 people saying “yes” to the question. For comparison’s sake, the Pew study referenced above covered nearly 10,000 people, and its surveyors ended up talking to almost 900 members of the age cohort in question.
Also, to be clear, nowhere in the study does Betterment exactly say what the questions were.
And that’s not a small omission. The whole study hinges on phrases like “money originally intended for investing” and “long-term financial strategy,” but we don’t see the questionnaire.
We don’t know how the questions were worded, or what types of choices the respondents were given, or anything. Obviously, there’s a pretty big difference between “I was going to put $20 into Robinhood this week but bet it on the Yankees instead” and “I consider sports betting part of my long-term investment strategy.”
And the methodology section doesn’t exactly overwhelm you with details. Was the survey weighted to reflect the actual makeup of people who invest? This obviously matters, especially when the report starts talking about “investors” as a whole. Look at the Pew study, which publishes pages upon pages of methodology explaining its weighting, subgroup sample sizes, margins of error. Betterment? Here’s 1,000 people, 250 from each generation, trust us.
Cherry picked
Then there was the cohort itself. Each person had to self-identify as holding at least one financial investment and they were excluded if they only had a 401(k).
So these 250 18-29 year-olds had to hold … stocks? CDs? ETFs? Meme coins? Baseball cards? A CD? It never says, so we don’t know.
But if all they had were a 401(k) — you know, investors — they don’t count.
And also, let’s consider the people allowed to answer the questions: These are people who invested, on their own, in something outside their 401(k). Meaning, they are actively thinking about money. And according to data from the Federal Reserve, only (and roughly) 1 in 4 people under 29 are doing this. So the self-selecting here gets even more self-selectly.
Furthermore, the 52% copped to “redirecting” money into a sports bet at least once in the last year. So, “once.”
Once.
The more damning number, I reckon, is the 14% of Gen Z — or, in this sample, about 35 people — who’ve done this numerous times in the past year.
If I had to guess — and this is a guess — the fact Gen Z probably does this more than the other generations (in the study, 31% of Millenials, 10% of Gen X, and 1% of Boomers took money intended for investing and moved it to sports betting once in the past year) is because the lines between “investing” and “gambling” have gotten a little blurred in the last decade or so. Meme coins and Gamestop and you know the rest.
But what if … what if that’s just today’s risky behavior?
What if younger generations have always been a little friskier with their money?
Let it rain
Just last year the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) released a study showing 43% of investors under 35 traded options, compared to just 10% of investors over 55.
Then there’s this 2013 study, from the Journals of Gerontology, that shows risky investment decisions decline with age.
Let’s go back further. A 1994 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis looked back at the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances and found that 21% of people under 25 are willing to take “substantial” risks with their investments, compared to 9% of the rest of the population.
So younger generations being riskier with money isn’t new, but the ways you can be frivolous with your money is.
So yeah: Is Gen Z blurring the line between gambling and investing? Sure. Probably. Fine. No real argument here.
But that doesn’t mean Gen Z invented the blur. I cherry-picked some research above — feel free to find more, there’s plenty — about how young people are much more willing to swing for the fences with their finances.
The apps have changed (and been invented) but the impulse hasn’t.
I’d like to see a real study on this one day. I have a sneaky suspicion the numbers will be wildly different.
