15% Of Americans Bet On Sports Using Prediction Markets: Survey Finds
An annual survey released Monday found that 15% of Americans have bet on sports using prediction markets. Given the current U.S. population of 342 million, that translates to more than 50 million people engaged in sports-related trades on platforms like Kalshi, Robinhood, Polymarket, and Crypto.com.
The Best betting sites continue to grow as part of daily life for American residents, with prediction markets taking a significant share of the money pie. The American Sports Fanship Survey found that 27% of Americans, and more than half of men ages 18-49 (52%), have active accounts with an online sportsbook. The data comes from the annual survey conducted by St. Bonaventure University’s Jandoli School of Communication and the Siena Research Institute.
When it came to prediction markets, the survey found that 42% of its "most-avid" sports fans placed sports trades, and 33% of all men surveyed ages 18-49 did so. Of those surveyed, 65% "strongly" or "somewhat" agree that these services should be subject to the same state regulations that govern online sports betting operators, as long as they allow users to profit from predicting the outcomes of sporting events.
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Survey Added Prediction Markets In 2026
Prediction markets were a new entity in this year's survey.
The growth in popularity and "presence in popular discussion" of prediction markets led to their addition this year, Siena Research Institute Director Dr. Don Levy told bookies.com Monday. "The entire landscape of sports betting continues to evolve. Adding prediction markets seemed like a new phenomenon that we were trying to get a measure of," he said.
"We continue to see online sports betting as an institution. When we started this survey (in 2024) population measurement was in the high teens. Now we're up close to 30%. It's become institutionalized," Levy said.
He sees a similar rise in terms of people trading on prediction markets.
"We're going to find growth next year. This number (15%) represents a lot of people. Prediction markets have gotten a tremendous amount of press; they piqued a lot of interest," Levy said. He added that the survey will likely take a deeper look at prediction markets in future surveys.
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Major Data Points From American Fanship Survey
American Fanship Survey 2026
St. Bonaventure University · Siena Research Institute · Online Sports Betting in America
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Survey: Online Sports Betting Remains an 'Active Part of life'
The number of Americans with the best online sportsbook accounts is up from 22% of Americans in 2025 and 19% in 2024.
“The results show that online sports betting remains an active part of life for a significant portion of Americans,” added Levy in a release with the survey data. “Since we began asking respondents about online sports betting in 2024, there has been a steady rise in those who say they have an active account – from about 1 in 5 to now 1 in 4 – and the share of respondents who bet on these platforms has grown just as much – from 17% of Americans in 2024 to 22% in 2026.”
Majorities of respondents now say online sportsbooks should not be allowed to advertise during sporting events on TV (53%) and that online sports betting will corrupt organized sports (56%) – each of which had less than 50% agreement in prior years of the survey.
A growing share of respondents say that the federal government should aggressively regulate online sports betting to specifically protect customers from compulsive gambling, 67-21% up from 58-28% in 2025.
“Legal and accessible gambling is perhaps the defining issue facing the sports world in the 2020s. What our survey shows is that sports fans have a complicated relationship with sports gambling,” said Dr. Brian Moritz, associate professor and Sports Journalism master’s program director at SBU’s Jandoli School, in the survey's release.
This American Sport Fanship Survey was conducted February 16 - 27, 2026, among 3,084 responses drawn from a proprietary online panel (Lucid/Cint) of United States Residents.
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