Note: Multiple student sources in this article are anonymous due to laws around minors and gambling.
With just a few taps, fans can transform a fun game into a wager, a shift that has reshaped the entertainment world of sports and created an unavoidable attraction to high school students.
Since ancient and medieval times, gambling has stood as a prominent extension to the sports we know today. However, it wasn’t until 2018, when the United States Supreme Court legalized sports betting for several states across the country. This resulted in the outpour of the mobile betting apps that have become a mainstream aspect of the modern-day sports industry.
Today, a sports fan will not be able to watch a game without the interruption of a sports gambling app advertisement. “Every game you watch, you see around five sports betting advertisements, saying, ‘You get free money.’ And that can really target younger people, because they don’t have that much money,” Mason McDunn, a Berkeley High School junior baseball player and sports fan, said.
In the modern day of advertising through social and online media, sports betting platforms have dominated much of a younger fan’s experience of sports through marketing, creating a perceived belief of free earnings and low risk. Combined with the access to these platforms through a couple clicks to avoid legal age restrictions against betting as teenagers, this has created a great appeal to many high schoolers and young fans. “Personally, I’m up around five hundred dollars in fantasy football and down around two hundred dollars on the app,” one student who chose to remain anoymous due to the laws around sports betting as a minor said, “(Sports betting) just adds more thrill and makes me more interested in it and adds some adrenaline to the game.”
Beyond the financial attraction, sports gambling has the potential to enhance or also ruin a fan’s experience. To many fans, these small bets can deepen their engagement to the game, encouraging them to track players, statistics, and deals more tightly, “I just love sports a lot, and thought it (sports betting) would make watching games a lot more fun,” one anonymous BHS student said. “I only bet on soccer and I follow players pretty well. I find myself really betting through soccer, because it’s the sport I just know the best, and I understand what a lot of the picks mean.”
This sense of encouragement to participate in the small mobile style bets of sports betting is no accident. The design and marketing of sports betting apps suggest an intentional great push and attraction for a lot of the younger audience. “A lot of ads that I’ve seen on social media are celebrities that teenagers know, like Druski, Drake, and Megan Thee Stallion,” Micah Freedman, a BHS sophomore and soccer player, said. “So there’s a lot of people advertising, who are more appealing towards teenagers and college kids which I think definitely motivates kids as they know the celebrities advocating for it.”
Zach Dickinson, BHS sophomore and baseball player, also added, “I think the apps are very targeted towards children in their marketing, where they try to make it seem like a game.”
As sports betting has gained popularity among teenagers, questions still remain about whether young app users fully understand the risks involved.
For many high school bettors, they expressed confidence in their control of smaller bets and knowledge of the potential pile of detrimental losses. “I understand the risk. That’s why I only ever use the promo money that they give me and never make big deposits. Most people I know, we’re putting just five dollar bets,” an anonymous student and sports bettor said.
However, while many spoke about their awareness of the money they are playing with, several also acknowledged the risk of addiction without the same caution. The negative mental effects gambling can have seem to be less of a concern for students. “It really is just a form of gambling. I think it boils down to that,” expressed one anonymous BHS sports bettor, “If you don’t know how to control yourself and control your money, then it’s just not the right thing for you because you will end up putting too much on the line.”