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- Fantasy sports, betting, and sweepstakes games have become widespread on college campuses.
- Some college students say it can keep friendships together, no matter the age or state barriers.
- But, students and researchers also worry this demographic is at risk of developing gambling habits.
Marcus didn't always care about tennis. The 19-year-old mainly followed soccer and the NFL before he started putting money down on sports.
Since he's too young to bet on apps like FanDuel and DraftKings, which require you to be 21 in most states, Marcus uses Fliff.
The app looks a lot like a sportsbook but isn't technically considered sports betting because it's modeled after sweepstakes. People can play for free or by purchasing virtual currency, and the prizes can be cashed in for real dollars. It's legal for anybody ages 18 years or older in most US states, including Virginia, where Marcus goes to school.
Marcus racked up about $6,000 in debt by purchasing virtual currency on Fliff. But this summer, a betting strategy on doubles tennis matches hit nearly every time and pulled him out of the negative. Marcus has now made more than $32,000 on the platform after pouring in $11,000 of his own money, according to records viewed by Business Insider.
He brought his buddies in on it, too — Marcus said they'd all wake up at 4 or 5 a.m. to catch the tennis matches and had planned to use their earnings for a trip to Cancún, Mexico. He said sports gaming's ability to create and deepen friendships is one of the main reasons he does it.
"Sports betting, oddly enough, has kept my friendships alive," Marcus said.
Marcus isn't alone in that feeling.
Noah, a 19-year-old who goes to college in Illinois, uses sports betting to keep up with his friends from high school.
"With some of my home friends, it's a great way to be communicating throughout the week," Noah said. "I'll just be like, 'Oh, what are your thoughts on this Falcons bet?'"
The expansion of legal sports betting in the US has fueled a widespread culture of gambling on college campuses, as savvy students find betting alternatives and workarounds for age limits and state restrictions. Research has shown that online sports bettors skew young and male. A May Morning Consult survey found that 70% of people who had placed a bet in the previous month were men and that, while only 10% were Gen Z adults, the next youngest demographic, millennials, were the most common bettors.
Many sports-loving college students like Marcus and Noah casually use fantasy gaming, sweepstakes, and betting to make and maintain friendships. Sports gaming's role as the glue of many college male friendships has made these young men more susceptible to developing harmful gambling habits, some students and experts told BI.
"These people are having their first chances at a little bit of financial independence," said 22-year-old Andrew, who goes to school in Virginia and bets on sports through apps including DraftKings and ESPN Bet. "It's definitely a little bit dangerous, and I hope everyone that's using it is educating themselves."
BI spoke with seven college students and three researchers to learn more about what sports betting looks like on campuses. The students' names have been replaced with pseudonyms to protect their identities given the sensitivities around gambling.
Some experts have seen college students develop such severe gambling habits that they've had to seek treatment with professionals like UCLA's Dr. Timothy Fong, a clinical professor of psychiatry who runs the university's gambling studies program.
"Prior to 2018, we were not seeing a lot of young people at all coming to treatment," Dr. Fong said, referring to the year the Supreme Court struck down a federal ban against sports betting, paving the way for more states to regulate it. "Now, five years of experience of sports betting becoming mainstream and this is not what we're seeing."
A culture of sports betting sustains friendships
Since the expansion of legalization, sports betting and gaming have exploded on college campuses largely through word of mouth. In the same way that students share new music and study guides, they pass around sports picks and advice in group chats. It's something to talk about with new friends and a way to keep old ones.
Some of the students BI spoke with said they placed bets by themselves when they were bored, but many said wagering went hand-in-hand with talking to their friends about it.
"Honestly, I'd feel kind of like a degenerate if I just did it by myself," said 21-year-old Miles, who goes to college in Illinois.
He started sports betting when he was underage through an illegal bookie, an older fraternity brother who placed bets for Miles online and who he paid through Venmo. He said sports betting has "definitely affected" his mental health in the past.
"It becomes a normal embedded part of the culture and that has huge implications," Dr. Fong said. "We've allowed it, but have we then kept up with educating that generation about what this activity really is?"
Noah, the 19-year-old attending college in Illinois, kept hearing about gambling on his favorite sports podcasts and from a close friend. About two years ago, he made a DraftKings account under his mom's name, which he still uses today. Even before that, he and his high school friends started a spreadsheet to predict the outcomes of games, and he uses their system of picks to stay in touch while they attend different colleges, he said.
"It's a really easy pathway into a conversation with my home friends who I miss," Noah said.
Chris, 22, hasn't put money on a game since Super Bowl Sunday. He used to play daily fantasy with his friends on Underdog and FanDuel — sports betting isn't legal in Minnesota, where he goes to college. But he quit cold turkey after realizing he wasn't usually winning back the $10 or $15 he'd put on each game.
"I was like, 'Oh, that's just the cost of hanging with friends,'" Chris said. "But then it kind of clicked on me."
How college students bypass age and state restrictions on sports betting
While regulators and others in the industry have set up restrictions to protect young people from gambling, many are finding ways around them. Bookies, VPNs, and offshore apps like Bovada are common, the students and researchers told BI, and daily fantasy and sweepstakes are legal alternatives for young people to put money down on sports.
While most states say you have to be 21 years old or older to place a bet, daily fantasy and sweepstakes are allowed in most markets for anyone 18 or up.
Fliff, the app Marcus uses, offers free-to-play sweepstakes games, permitting it to operate in places where sports betting isn't legal. But the app also allows users to make predictions on games and earn real money for it, appearing to users like other sportsbooks with options to pick the moneyline, spread, and player props, or build parlays.
Marcus said, to him, the app feels like sports betting.
Fliff said in a statement to BI that it "imposes daily, weekly, and monthly purchase limitations," including restricting users who are 18 from making purchases and limiting purchases by users ages 19 and older based on their age brackets, though it did not say what the limits were.
Another sports betting alternative, daily fantasy, allows users to set and compete for money on their own team lineups. Students who go to school in Minnesota and California, where sports betting isn't legal, told BI they and their friends had used apps including PrizePicks, Underdog, and FanDuel to put money down on daily fantasy games, which offer real cash prizes.
Lawmakers are still going back and forth about whether the latest wave of daily fantasy offerings, pick'em style games popularized by companies including Underdog and PrizePicks, should be considered sports betting. These games are similar to building parlays in that users need to accurately predict numerous player outcomes in order to win, and have drawn scrutiny from regulators in states including New York, Florida, Maine, and Michigan.
Recently, Maryland lawmakers shut down in December DraftKings' pick'em version, saying it can't be considered daily fantasy, which would be available to people 18 and up.
"Because fantasy contests require multiple customers competing against each other, a gambling arrangement that involves customers betting on athletes' performance metrics against an operator's established baseline, and not other contest participants, constitutes sports betting," as defined by state law, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares wrote in December.
Some college students in states where gambling isn't legal said friends also head to local Native American tribal casinos, which states like California and Florida permit to offer sports betting, or they drive across state lines to place bets.
Many of these students said they didn't see these strategies as workarounds, or see betting as a bad thing. Putting money on a game is so common in their friend groups and the wider sports community that they want to be a part of the culture in whichever way they can.
Still, the prevalence and addictive nature of sports betting, coupled with tech-savvy college kids, has created a desire to find both legal and illegal loopholes, researchers say.
"The technological world that this generation is so comfortable with," Dr. Fong said, "they use it to their advantage to access gambling opportunities, both legal and unregulated."
Young sports lovers are at risk of developing gambling habits, and many don't understand how to bet responsibly
Researchers and students alike are aware of how the prevalence of sports betting as a social connector on college campuses is developing gambling habits in more young people — and that no one is teaching them how to avoid potential risks.
Many of these companies also push low-risk promotions that can get users hooked.
When ESPN Bet launched in November, users earned a free $100 after placing their first bet or were matched on a $1,000 deposit. To continue promotion in early 2022 after launching in New York, the Caesars Sportsbook offered a $300 sign-up bonus and a deposit match up to $3,000.
Marcus used Fliff's in-app promotions to help pull himself out of debt. Fliff gives users with under $5 of Fliff Cash in their account a free dollar every day, and $0.10 every two hours. The promotion can incentivize both casual and unsuccessful bettors to keep using the app.
"I thought if I'm not putting in any money of my own, there's not really any risk," Marcus said.
It's not just the social aspect and low-risk promotions that can spark gambling habits, it's also the continual opportunity to make in-game bets, according to Jeffrey Derevensky, the director of McGill University's center focused on youth gambling research. He said live-betting and prop bets entice impulsive young men who believe they know everything about sports but haven't been taught about the risks associated with gambling. Plus, this demographic is less likely to call a helpline because they don't believe they have a problem, he said.
"It's the 18- to 25-year-olds that are at the greatest risk for gambling problems," Derevensky said. "We talk about teaching young people about unprotected sex. We talk about drugs, we talk about smoking, but very few places actually have gambling-prevention programs where we're trying to encourage people, if they're going to gamble, to gamble responsibly."
In extreme cases, Derevensky and Dr. Fong said they had seen young people who had taken out predatory loans, stolen from their families, ran up their parents' credit cards, dropped out of school, and even shoplifted and resold expensive liquor to get cash to bet on sports.
While operators have pulled back on partnering with universities to market to young people after regulatory pushback, some students said they still feel their generation is being targeted by sports betting operators, especially through social-media advertising and sponsored influencers. That sentiment was shared by the researchers.
The students said they were concerned about how commonplace the topic has become on big outlets like ESPN.
"I am very, very, very anxious about how much the sports broadcasting and sports publications are covering sports gambling," said Chris, the student who stopped sports betting last year.
With so much money flying around the sports industry, gambling is still very much in "the primitive stage, not as regulated as it should be, and a lot of people are susceptible to that message," he said.
Students and researchers were also concerned about student-athletes who place bets. Several Iowa and Iowa State student-athletes faced charges in the summer that alleged the students hid their identities to place bets, including on their own games. Athlete betting jeopardizes the integrity of competition, but college athletes are also students prone to make mistakes, said Andrew, attending school in Virginia.
"While there is responsible use of it, I think there are a lot of concerns and a lot of policies that still need to be carved out," Andrew said.