Gamification and memes lure young people to sports wagering apps, prediction markets

A phone displays crypto prices on the Kalshi app on April 16, 2026, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)2026-05-28T10:00:06Z When Rory McIlroy won the Masters for the second year in a row, Kalshi shared a photo of him on Instagram with the words, “Wait he’s goated.” When a video of NBA player Damian Lillard recovering from an injury circulated online, Kalshi’s main competitor Polymarket posted, “The league is cooked.”If you don’t know what either of those phrases mean, it’s because you may not be the target audience. The posts and hundreds of others like it are exposing younger people to prediction market platforms, where users can put money on the line for the outcomes of real-world events — or absurd ones like when the U.S. will confirm that aliens exist or whether Jesus Christ will return before 2027.Once on the platforms, companies keep users hooked with what they market as low-stakes, casual opportunities to make an easy buck, creating an environment that some say feels more like a game and less like a risky financial transaction with potentially harmful consequences. Indeed, recent academic research looking at 588 million trades on Polymarket found that profits were concentrated to just a very small group of top traders while the majority of users — 69% — lost money. Kalshi, Polymarket and some sports wagering platforms are available to users starting at 18, mirroring the minimum age requirement for investing in the stock market but younger than the age limit of 21 for gambling in most U.S. states. That three-year window is critical to cognitive development, according to some experts, who note that teens and young adults are more vulnerable to developing problematic gambling behavior and addiction than older adults. “The adults in the room are not taking the fact this is meant to be an adult activity seriously, so when adults don’t take it seriously, why would the kids?” said Dr. Timothy Fong, an addiction psychiatrist and the co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program, who notes that the “velocity of gambling” combined with the “frictionless” access to it creates a dangerous slope for young people. Read More Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., introduced legislation last week with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Con., that would bar social media companies and advertisers from showing sports betting ads to minors. Blumenthal said sportsbooks and prediction markets are “treating young people like a gold rush, flooding the internet with advertisements and promotions to hook them on gambling when they’re young.” Hot air balloon diving, chimps and memesThe humorous, meme-driven approach by both prediction markets and sports wagering platforms is not simply in pursuit of social media clout but a deliberate, carefully curated strategy to reach young people, says Jason Levin, the founder of Memelord Technologies. His company offers marketing tools like meme templates he says both Polymarket and Kalshi have used. “If you want to attract a younger audience, you’re going to use memes. You’re going to use unhinged humor,” Levin said. “You’re going to try to get in front of them by any means necessary.”One recent Polymarket ad on Meta’s social media platforms shows an influencer hanging off a hot air balloon before letting go and plummeting. Another from Kalshi shows chimpanzees wearing suits in party settings. And Fliff — a free-to-play platform that calls itself a “social sportsbook” — uses a common meme template of a car dashing to make an exit on the highway. Ads for these platforms also appear on mobile games and in several other places online where they can reach young people. Kalshi spokesperson Jack Such told The Associated Press memes are “just a part of corporate branding nowadays” and their usage isn’t necessarily related to the age of potential viewers. The average age of a Kalshi user is 33, Such said. Polymarket declined to comment. ‘The hardest wager to get is the first wager’About 3 in 10 of American adults under 30 said they placed a sports bet in the past year, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in summer 2025. About 2 in 10 Americans under 30 — including 21% of men and 16% of women in that age group — said they wagered online in that period, up from 7% three years earlier.Prediction markets have tried to distinguish themselves from gambling by emphasizing that their users aren’t placing bets; they’re making a prediction on the probable outcome of an event. And because the platforms are regulated by the federal government via the the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, they are not subject to state-level restrictions or bans in place for traditional gambling and sports betting, including higher age limits. But even some online sports wagering platforms are open to users starting at 18, including Fliff, which doesn’t require users to pay to participate, emphasizing the entertainment value instead. Many of these platforms operate on a sweepstakes-based model, making th

A phone displays crypto prices on the Kalshi app on April 16, 2026, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)2026-05-28T10:00:06Z When Rory McIlroy won the Masters for the second year in a row, Kalshi shared a photo of him on Instagram with the words, “Wait he’s goated.” When a video of NBA player Damian Lillard…

A phone displays crypto prices on the Kalshi app on April 16, 2026, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)2026-05-28T10:00:06Z When Rory McIlroy won the Masters for the second year in a row, Kalshi shared a photo of him on Instagram with the words, “Wait he’s goated.” When a video of NBA player Damian Lillard recovering from an injury circulated online, Kalshi’s main competitor Polymarket posted, “The league is cooked.”If you don’t know what either of those phrases mean, it’s because you may not be…