​A new Urban Institute report released on Thursday shows that online sports bettors are more likely to spend more, place riskier bets, save less for the future, and fall behind on bills compared with people who gamble only at casinos or racetracks. This disparity is fueling a fresh wave of regulatory proposals at both the state and federal levels. The report compared the betting habits and financial outcomes of more than 320 online and in-person sports bettors, revealing that online gamblers tend to bet more frequently, spend more over the past year, and engage in higher-risk wagering.
The survey found that online gamblers faced greater financial challenges in the prior 12 months than in-person bettors. They were 15 times more likely to report missing a bill payment and twice as likely to say they had saved less money than they otherwise would have. A notable minority of sports bettors, 12 percent, reported saving less money due to their gambling, and this pattern was more common among lower-income individuals (earning under $50,000) and younger gamblers aged 18 to 29.
Although most sports bettors wager only occasionally, online bettors tend to gamble far more often: 7 percent reported betting daily (versus none of the in-person bettors), 28 percent said they bet weekly, and 23 percent said they bet monthly. More than two-thirds, 67 percent, of sports gamblers say their primary motivation is to win money, even though other studies indicate that most people do not profit from sports betting and, on average, lose about 7.5 cents for every dollar wagered.
In terms of betting capacity, a majority of sports bettors (55 percent) reported placing less than $100 on sports in the 12 months before survey completion, while a substantial minority (11 percent) said they had wager more than $1,000 in the past year. The most common form of betting is a single-game wager on the outcome of a game or match, with 71 percent of sports bettors saying they placed at least one such bet in the last year. Other popular formats include parlays, prop bets, live bets, and futures bets.
Sports betting has grown rapidly since the Supreme Court legalized it at the state level in 2018. Americans reportedly wagered $167 billion last year, up from $57 billion in 2021. In response, policymakers are weighing tighter gambling restrictions at both the state and federal levels. In March, Senators Adam Schiff and John Curtis introduced bipartisan legislation to ban prediction markets from processing sports-related wagers, citing concerns that prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi do not currently adhere to state and tribal consumer protections surrounding sports betting. Several states, including Illinois, Massachusetts, and Minnesota, have already moved to regulate sports betting or passed bills to do so, reflecting a broader push for oversight and consumer protections in this expanding market.