Growing belief
DraftKings CEO Jason Robins has warned Americans against thinking of sports betting as an investment, a timely comment on the back of a recent survey that revealed a rising belief among US bettors that the opposite was true.
major shift in bettor perception
Robins’ comments late last week followed a survey published by California-based personal finance firm NerdWallet that revealed a major shift in bettor perception.
According to NerdWallet, 31% of sports bettors in the US now think of gambling is an investment, a perception that’s spiked a significant 14% on 2024 beliefs.
Robins stated that DraftKings’ offers products for entertainment while advising bettors it was “not something that we recommend people looking at as an investment.”
Money the prime motivator
According to NerdWallet’s report late January, 65% of sports bettors engage in the vertical for the aim of making extra money. Investment trumps enjoyment (61%) and “social interactions with friends and family” (53%) as prime motivators to gamble.
In addition, around one out of every seven sports bettors (14%) admit “they’ve gone into debt to gamble.”
On Saturday, Fortune reported Robins as stating that most sports bettors understood they were “likely to lose money” over a stretch of time.
University of South Carolina sports and entertainment professor Stephen Shapiro concurred, saying sports betting was “more akin to day trading than long-term investing.”
Wider impact
The rising shift in the perception of sports betting as an investment tool and bettors getting into debt over it has a cautionary link to a recent study in the UK.
News emerged last week of a University of Bristol study claiming American risk managers take bigger chances on stocks in US states that have legalized sports betting.