Your Money Has New Competition
Have you noticed that betting is suddenly everywhere?
Watch a football game? There are betting odds on the screen. Tune into the Golden Globes? This year, prediction-market platform Polymarket was an official partner, with betting odds incorporated into the broadcast. Open your phone? You can place a bet in approximately the amount of time it takes me to decide what I want for lunch.
As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about the forces competing for our money, I’ve been going down a bit of a rabbit hole on this one. And there’s enough here that I’m turning it into a short series.
Today, I want to start with the bigger picture: how gambling became so deeply embedded in everyday American life and what that might mean for our finances.
Gambling Comes to Your Couch
For most of my life, I thought about gambling as something you had to actively seek out. You went to a casino. You bought a lottery ticket. You drove to a racetrack. Now, that friction has largely disappeared.
In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down the federal law that had effectively prohibited state-authorized sports betting in most of the country. Since then, legal sports betting has spread rapidly across the U.S., and in many states you don't even need to leave your couch to participate.
And boy, are Americans participating. According to the American Gaming Association, Americans legally wagered nearly $167 billion on sports in 2025. Yes, billion with a B.
Of course, occasionally placing a $10 bet on a football game doesn't mean you're going to gamble yourself into financial ruin. Gambling can be entertainment, just like going to a concert or buying a scratch ticket.
But the sheer scale and accessibility raises a bigger question: what happens to our finances when gambling becomes something we can do anywhere, anytime, from the same device we use to check our bank balance?
The Money Has to Come From Somewhere
This is where the research gets interesting. Researchers studying what happened after states legalized online sports betting found that as betting increased, savings declined. Sports betting also crowded out money that otherwise would have gone toward investments.
The effects were especially pronounced for financially constrained households, where researchers also found increases in credit-card debt and overdrafts.
In other words: the money we gamble has to come from somewhere. If $100 goes toward DraftKings instead of a Roth IRA, that's $100 that isn't invested. If it goes toward a bet instead of paying down a credit card, that debt sticks around a little longer. And when money is already tight, those trade-offs matter even more.
It's Bigger Than "Make Better Choices"
This is also where I resist turning this into another personal-finance lecture about individual responsibility. Just stop gambling! Have more self-control! Make better choices!
We've heard versions of this argument about everything from credit-card debt to avocado toast. And yes, our individual choices matter. But the environment in which we make those choices matters too.
Online betting removes an enormous amount of friction. You don't need to drive to a casino or even pull out your wallet. Meanwhile, there is an enormous industry with a financial incentive to keep people betting.
That's why I think this belongs in conversations about personal finance. It's not just about whether an individual bet is "good" or "bad." It's about understanding who is competing for our money, how they're trying to get it, and what we might be giving up in exchange.
And that brings me to the next part of this series. Because gambling and prediction-market companies have historically attracted a lot more men than women. Now, they want women too.
And apparently the strategy involves Taylor Swift, matcha, The Bachelorette, female influencers, and...God help us..."girl math." We have a lot to talk about.
Tune in next time for part two of this series, where we'll dig into how exactly the industry is targeting women as its next big untapped market.
Sources & Further Reading
