Lucia Thomas | Designer

“Brilliant,” my mother messaged me a few weeks ago on Instagram. When I opened her message, I expected the post she was referring to would be a video of Rick Beato explaining a rock song or maybe even an update on the world of figure skating (two things we love talking about). To my surprise, her “brilliant” was in reference to an ad for the sports betting app Fanatics, featuring Kendall Jenner.

An abundance of sports betting ads has flooded streaming platforms, YouTube, and social media since sports betting became legal in Missouri just two months ago. 

“It was weird seeing LeBron [James] on my For You page telling me to bet instead of seeing him dunk on somebody,” junior Julián Villamil said. Villamil placed his first bet just a few hours before our conversation. 

“It was wonderful,” he said. “I just won 20 minutes ago. I got 48 bucks like that off my first three-leg parlay.” 

In a recent Student Life poll of 206 WashU undergraduates, only 39 (18.9%) have ever placed a sports bet on an app, and roughly half of those who said yes have also placed sports bets during class.

While Villamil has seen various ads promoting sports betting over the past two months, his initial reason for placing a sports bet had nothing to do with a basketball star telling him to. Instead, it was because he needed the money. 

According to Villamil, after mentioning to a friend that he was broke, she told him that her boyfriend won $300 over the weekend on bets he placed on Fanatics. After this conversation, Villamil quickly set up an account and easily linked it to his bank. His friend’s boyfriend sent Villamil $100 in bonus bets, which helped him win $48 from his first parlay (a wager that involves placing multiple varied bets on the outcome of a single game. For example, both the Patriots must win the game and Drake Maye, their quarterback, must complete three touchdowns for the bet to cash.) 

“I wish I had bet $100 knowing that I would have won a lot more. But I feel like that’s part of how people get addicted,” Villamil said.

Bonus bets through referrals are a popular way for many to get into betting. Sportsbooks market them as risk-free, enticing first-time bettors to place their first wager. They can cast feelings of false security by making it appear as though a bet will almost definitely cash out in profit, which is not always the case. Bonus bets let individuals boost small wagers with large credits and reap the profits only, not the stake from the bonus.

For example, a bettor can deposit $5 to use a $20 bonus bet for a game at 2-to-1 odds of winning. If it wins, the bettor receives $40 in profit. If the bet loses, the bettor does not incur a monetary loss. Only the $20 bonus credit is lost. 

“Most of my friends who made accounts when it got legalized just made the account for the bonuses, and now they’re out of [sports betting],” senior Jeremy Li said.

Upon Missouri’s legalization of sports betting –– which came as a result of an amendment that passed in the Nov. 2024 election by a slim margin of 0.05% –– Li took advantage of the multitude of bonus bets being offered by different sports betting platforms.

“I made around $2,500 in a couple weeks. But since then, I’ve instantly cooled off from that,” Li said. Now, Li describes himself as “a casual sports bettor” who will place small bets of $5 on games he is especially invested in.

WashU Professor of Economics and Director of Graduate Studies in Economics, Jonathan Weinstein, explains how sportsbooks ensure they always come out on top.

“[Sportsbooks] take a percentage of every bet, effectively. So if you have a game that is effectively equal, both sides are equally likely to win, then if you risk losing $110, you only gain $100,” he said. “But in the way that the payoffs work, the sportsbook will take 5% of the money. So for every million dollars in bets that they take in, they’re keeping about 5%, or $50,000, which is a very healthy profit margin,” Weinstein said.

When states legalize sports betting, they collect tax revenue from the industry. Under the Missouri tax code, 10% of profit derived from sports betting is allocated to education and gambling addiction services.

Prior to legalization, sports betting was initially estimated to generate between $20 million and $28 million annually for Missouri. In the first month after legalization, however, the industry only generated $521,000 in tax revenue, despite $543 million being cast in bets. This is primarily because most of the money cast in bets were from bonus credits, so no money was collected from them. The annual estimation will most likely be realized when new users start betting real money.

Weinstein likened sports betting to trading on the stock market, with the main difference being the percentage of the transactions they keep for themselves: “[The] stock market would be under 1% and sportsbooks are a minimum of 5%,” he said. 

More complicated bets, such as parlays with multiple legs, yield an even higher percentage in transaction costs for the sportsbook. 

“So what all this means is, in the long run, almost every individual bettor will lose … if you get half your bets right, then you lose. You have to get substantially more than half in order to gain,” Weinstein said.

Despite parlays being the type of bet most statistically improbable to win, they are one of the most popular kinds of bets students place. Villamil, for example, said he enjoys betting on parlays more than placing straight bets.

Some students prefer to avoid the risks and dangers of sports betting while still joining in on the fun with hypothetical bets. Junior Sanjana Rentala places hypothetical bets with her friends back home as a way to stay connected with them.

“We’ll text each other being like, ‘I would take the under on this,’ but we won’t actually put money down on it,” she said. “And I have a friend who has a whole other salary just from sports betting. And he makes more money now than his dad because of his sports betting. … I think that in reality the amount of people that are actually profitable in gambling and sports betting is the 1%, ” Rentala said.

Rentala is correct to assume that a low percentage of players actually win big, while everyone else incurs a net loss.

“Some people really are so knowledgeable about the game that they can actually predict the games better than the market. And that is not easy. Probably less than 1% of all the people betting are good enough to do that,” Weinstein said. “No one should go in assuming that they’re good.”

Rentala’s reason for not betting, despite having a wildly successful friend, is straightforward: “I’m not gonna lose money on something stupid like that. I would be so mad at myself,” she said. 

Weinstein emphasized that anyone placing a bet should always be prepared to lose. He advises that individuals should only bet after setting a fixed budget they are comfortable with losing entirely. Doing so requires discipline, helping to prevent individuals from losing large sums of money and staying aware of their expenses while enjoying the risk of the game.

“When it comes to sports betting, the risk is fun. And I would say it’s not just about the risk. It’s about creating stakes that get you engaged in the emotional flow of the game,” Weinstein said. 

Senior Deven Rozario thinks that betting on sports could create worthwhile advantages for bettors who are disciplined enough to avoid getting addicted to the rush of winning or losing. Unlike Li, who places bets on sports, Rozario bets on prediction markets through Kalshi, a trading platform regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Kalshi has been legal in all 50 states since its launch in 2021 but only recently began to include sports betting.

“I feel like the people at WashU are very risk-averse … So if this helps you break out of that shell, become less risk-averse and be more entrepreneurial, I think it’s the best thing you can do, especially if you’re making educated plays about what you’re doing,” Rozario said.

In a similar manner, Weinstein compared placing occasional low-stakes bets to completing the crossword puzzle in the morning. “It’s like a mathematical puzzle trying to work out what the best bet is to place.”

Among those who place bets at WashU, there is a common consensus that betting is best practiced as a social activity to have fun with friends. Both Li and Villamil keep spreadsheets of their net wins and losses, with hard boundaries set on how much money they are willing to lose before stopping.

“I think that’s an important nuance to know, that sports betting shouldn’t be something that you use to make money. It should just be something to give you a little dopamine,” Li said.