More than half of Gen Z investors have redirected money originally set aside for investing into sports betting in the past year, according to a Betterment survey of 1,000 retail investors that CNBC turned into a video segment Friday. [1]

The underlying numbers, first published by Betterment on Aug. 12, are more specific than CNBC's "more than half": 52% of Gen Z investors said they had shifted investing money into sports betting at least once in the past year, and 26% now treat sports betting as a deliberate part of their long-term financial strategy — not a one-off flutter, but a line item in how they plan to build wealth. [2] Sports betting has become difficult to avoid since the Supreme Court cleared the way for states to legalize it in 2018; the industry has since expanded into an omnipresent layer of sports media and app-store real estate that increasingly competes with brokerage apps for the same dollars. [1]

Betterment's own leadership treated the finding as a warning rather than a curiosity. "When a prediction market or sportsbook starts to feel like a retirement strategy, we have a problem," said CEO Sarah Levy in the survey's Aug. 12 release. "These products are designed to keep people seeking the next quick score, not to help them build toward the next decade." [2] Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas flagged the same 52% figure on X two weeks before CNBC's segment aired, calling the shift "wow" — commentary that circulated among finance-focused accounts well before it became a mainstream video story.

-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos