How sports apps hooked a generation of women

In September, actress Sydney Sweeney appeared, covered by little more than footballs and other sports gear, in a national ad for the betting platform Novig. Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus called it “a kick in the face to every woman who had dedicated her life to perfecting her craft.”

Then, in October, Sweeney and Novig answered with a sequel , topless again, under the same slogan: “Just sports.” It drew a fresh round of complaints . “Why do you have to be naked to market sports?” one commenter asked.

Both rounds of outrage were about what the ads said about women athletes. But the women with the most reason to be offended went unmentioned: the silent, growing number of female gamblers.

Betting ads should be restricted the way tobacco ads are, and betting apps should be made to tell users the truth about what they are losing and what their real odds are.

Sports betting is usually described as a man’s habit. But since the Supreme Court opened the door to legal sports betting nationwide in 2018, betting has exploded; last year, Americans wagered $166.9 billion . Women made up 35 percent of online sports bettors last year, up from 26 percent in 2022, according to the American Gaming Association.

In ads like Sweeney’s, a woman’s body is the draw. In others, featuring Kendall Jenner or Lisa Leslie , women are the customers. So are women the bait or the bettor?

This fall, the Wheatley Institute surveyed a nationally representative sample of 2,665 American adults about their gambling habits and beliefs. What surprised us was how many young women are now placing bets. Forty percent of women under 30 reported betting on sports through an app at least once a year, compared with 24 percent of women overall, and nearly a third reported using a prediction market at least once a year.

These women are not simply dabbling. Elaina Bozzuto, a 30-year-old Connecticut mother, lost as much as $200,000 on a betting app over three years before filing for bankruptcy, Bloomberg Law reported. One in five women in our survey said that in the past year she had gone back another day to win back money she had lost. About one in six had lied about her gambling, and about one in eight had needed someone to bail her out. Of those who had deleted a betting app, roughly two-thirds later downloaded it again.

They also bet from a weaker position. Only about half of the women we surveyed described their finances as good or excellent, compared with 69 percent of men. That is a costly place to start in a game where 96 percent of online gamblers appeared to lose money over five years, according to a UC San Diego study of more than 700,000 Americans.

For half a century, we have measured women’s progress in part by how closely their lives converge with men’s. Now they are converging in vices, too. The gap between men’s and women’s drinking, once more than two to one, has nearly closed among younger people. Gambling appears to be following the same path.

As scholars who study human flourishing , we look at close relationships, financial security, mental health and character. Gambling works against each of them . It is a business that does well only when nearly everyone who plays it does not .

Many young adults sense this. Half of adults under 30 said betting is morally wrong and can lead to addiction, more than any other age group. Yet 60 percent had had a betting app on their phones. Across all ages, people who called gambling morally wrong still gambled about as often as everyone else.

It is not that young people lack a conscience about gambling. It is that their conscience doesn’t win out.

Adults under 30 told us they learned about gambling from YouTube (42 percent) and TikTok (27 percent) far more often than from their own families (17 percent). A public education campaign should meet them there and explain why betting is no reliable way to earn money. Betting apps should carry clear warnings about addiction and a number to call for help, and prompt users to set a spending limit before their first deposit, as Britain already requires .

Lawmakers should restrict betting ads as they restricted tobacco ads. The 1998 settlement banned billboards, cartoons and youth targeting. A 2025 review linked tobacco advertising bans to a 37 percent lower risk of starting smoking. Keep betting ads away from young audiences and off live sports broadcasts. We should watch games without being sold a gambling habit.

The debate over Sweeney’s ads asked whether they were fair to women athletes. It might have asked about the women being sold the bet.

If current trends hold, women could soon be gambling as much as men. But equal opportunity to lose is not progress.

Shima Baradaran Baughman is the Woodruff J. Deem Professor of Law at Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School and a distinguished fellow at the Wheatley Institute. Stephen Cranney is a data scientist with a Ph.D. in demography and sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and an appointment at the Catholic University of America.