Survey Shows 60% of Students in US Colleges Gamble Illegally

During the period from December 7 to December 9, Intelligent.com conducted a survey among US college students asking them questions about their habits connected to gambling. The representative sample was 986 students who were 18 years or older and were enrolled in part-time and full-time undergraduate, college, and graduate programs across the US.

One of the shocking revelations of the survey was that students reported being targeted by gambling advertising through their college or school. It turned out that 1 in 4 students have had their college promote sports wagering to them. This accounts for about 26% of the respondents.

35% of that group report that their own school has provided them with a promotion code for a sports betting product. 39% say they have met representatives from gambling companies on campus and 33% note that they received promotional information on sports betting from their college via email.

However, the most worrying finding of the survey was that 85% of the respondents that said their college has promoted gambling to them reported that they started gambling because of these promotions.
Online gambling and sports betting have become more widely available as more and more US states legalize these forms of gambling. Universities and colleges have also jumped on the bandwagon by striking hefty sponsorship deals with gambling companies to finance their athletic departments.

At the same time, gambling has been named the fastest-growing addiction in the US. The National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) has reported that risks connected to gambling addiction have grown by 30% from 2018, when the legalization of sports betting in the US was allowed, to 2021. The NCPG has also noted an increase in the calls coming to their gambling harm hotline by 45% and an increase of 100% in the people contacting the service through text and chat messages.

60% of Students Have Gambled Illegally

While promoting highly addictive gambling products to young people is in itself highly disturbing, the fact that colleges do so to their students who often have not even reached the legal age for doing so is even more troubling.

The Intelligent.com survey showed that 6 in 10 students have used somebody else’s credentials or account to gamble as they are not of the legal age to do so. That accounts for 60%!

Further revelations were that 17% of the respondents reported that they have spent part of their student loan or financial aid money on gambling. 31% gambled away funds they got from their parents and 31% used credit.

The survey shows that gambling has overall disturbed the students’ finances as 29% said they did not spend so much on food in order to have money left for gambling, 17% were late with the payment of their bills, while 16% even reported that they cut part of their classes.