A new poll by Ipsos, a multinational market research and consulting firm, has found that young, white men are driving the sports betting boom that can be currently seen in the US.
With the Super Bowl fast approaching, data-driven companies such as GeoComply have recorded record levels of sports betting in recent months.
Despite an boom in growth from gambling revenue in the past few years – which rose from $1.55bn in 2020 to $4.33 billion in 2021 – Ipsos says it is only a small demographic that is driving these numbers.
Delving deeper into the stats, we see that 68% of sports bettors are males, 39% are under the age of 35 and 51% are white.
A DraftKings survey showed that 20.5 million Americans planned to wager around $1.8m on the 2022 World Cup; however, according to Ipsos the 8% of Americans who did bet were consigned to this narrow demographic.
Ipsos SVP Chris Jackson commented: “As the dollar spent on bets suggests, those who do bet on sports are very engaged in the sporting world. Compared to the general public, they are more likely to self-describe as sports fans, play fantasy sports, go to live sporting events, and watch more niche types of sports, like esports.
"Most Americans remain uninterested in sports betting and are not at all in tune with the debate over its legalization status in their respective states. There is not so much an opposition to sports betting as an ambivalence toward it – one-third of the people surveyed said they had no opinion on the matter."
