Memes Hook Young Bettors as 69% Lose and the Top 1% Win

Prediction markets and sports betting apps spent the spring speaking to young people in their own slang. When Rory McIlroy, the golfer, won a second straight Masters, the event-trading app Kalshi posted his photo captioned “Wait he’s goated.” Its rival Polymarket greeted a clip of an injured NBA player with “The league is cooked.”

Those jokes are doing serious work. A study of 588 million trades on Polymarket found that nearly 69% of users lost money, while the top 1% of accounts collected 76.5% of all profits. The crowd the memes court is, on the numbers, the crowd that funds the payouts.

The Meme Pipeline Aimed at Eighteen-Year-Olds

The humor is not an accident. Jason Levin, founder of the marketing firm Memelord Technologies, which sells meme templates, says the leading prediction-market apps have used his tools to chase a specific demographic.

“If you want to attract a younger audience, you’re going to use memes. You’re going to use unhinged humor,” Levin said. “You’re going to try to get in front of them by any means necessary.”

The output runs wherever ad space is cheap and young eyes are plentiful. One recent spot on Meta’s platforms shows an influencer dangling from a hot-air balloon before letting go and plummeting. Another features chimpanzees in suits at a party. Fliff, a free-to-play “social sportsbook,” leans on the highway-exit meme template. The same ads surface inside mobile games and across the wider web.

Jack Such, a Kalshi spokesperson, told The Associated Press that memes are “just a part of corporate branding nowadays” and not necessarily tied to a viewer’s age. The average age of a user on his platform is 33, he said, and the company has rejected gamified flourishes like on-screen confetti after a confirmed trade. It also asks some new sign-ups for a live selfie and uses facial recognition at login. Polymarket declined to comment.

Where the Winnings Pool Up

The reason the marketing matters is what happens after the first wager clears. Because every trade settles on a public blockchain, researchers from London Business School and Yale could rebuild each wallet’s running profit and loss from the raw record, then check it against the platform’s own data feed. The two matched.

• 68.8% of users lost money across 588 million trades worth roughly $67 billion.
• 76.5% of profits flowed to the top 1% of accounts.
• Half of all gains were captured by the top 0.1%.

The split is not random luck. The strongest predictor of profit was not picking the right side; it was posting limit orders rather than grabbing them, the kind of patient, professional behavior most casual users never learn. Losing accounts also piled into long-shot trades at extreme prices, below 10 cents or above 90 cents, far more often than the winners did.

Paris Woods, an author and financial educator, frames the timing as the real damage. Money lost at 18 or 19, she argues, is money taken from a future self who needed it more. “It’s not just eroding the present and sort of taking their hard-earned money out of their hands at 18 or 19,” Woods said, “but it’s actually taking money out of that 40 or 50-year-old version of themselves.”

The Three-Year Window Regulators Left Open

The platforms can recruit at 18 because of a regulatory quirk. Kalshi and Polymarket operate as event-contract venues under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC, the federal regulator that oversees derivatives), which sets an 18-plus floor that mirrors stock investing rather than the 21-plus limit most states impose on casinos and sportsbooks. Many sweepstakes-model apps land at 18 as well.

That gap matters more than it sounds. Pew Research Center’s 2025 survey on legal sports betting found that 17% of adults under 30 placed an online wager in the past year, including 21% of men and 16% of women, up from just 7% three years earlier.

Dr. Timothy Fong, an addiction psychiatrist and co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program, calls that three-year window a developmental danger zone. Teens and young adults, he notes, are more prone than older adults to slide into problem gambling, and the “velocity” and “frictionless” feel of these apps speed the descent. “A young brain that’s not fully formed… that’s going to leave a significant mark,” he said. “And that brain is going to want it again.”

Leaderboards, Badges and the Borrowed Video-Game Loop

Strip away the financial language and a lot of these products look like games. Adrian Hon, a game designer and author of “You’ve Been Played,” says the borrowed mechanics exist to keep users placing wagers and checking results.

“They tighten the loop of setting a bet and getting the feedback,” Hon said. “It makes it more visceral. It makes it more exciting. It makes it more real-time.” It is the same compulsion engineering behind how heavy phone use hardens into a learned habit, applied to money.

Fliff, built in bright colors and cartoon art, hands users a full social profile. The toolkit reads like a console title:

• Customizable avatars and personal bio pages
• Follower counts and in-app chat
• Leaderboards that rank players against each other
• Achievement badges and on-screen rewards

Both prediction-market apps run leaderboards and comment sections where users trade text and GIFs. The company behind Fliff says its “social gaming experience” offers “no-cost avenues” to compete and that its features resemble “those that exist more broadly within many consumer applications.” Defenders argue the comments help traders share information; critics see a slot machine wearing a friend list.

What the GAME Act Would and Would Not Reach

Washington has noticed. On May 18, Senators Katie Britt, Republican of Alabama, and Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, introduced the Gaming Advertisement to Minors Enforcement Act, or GAME Act, which would bar social media companies and ad networks from targeting minors with sports betting and prediction-market promotions.

Sportsbooks and prediction markets are treating young people like a gold rush, flooding the internet with advertisements and promotions to hook them on gambling when they’re young.

That was Blumenthal, in the announcement of the bill. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) would enforce it, with penalties reaching $100,000 per advertisement shown to a minor and repeat offenders referred to the Department of Justice. The measure pointedly folds prediction markets in alongside traditional sportsbooks, a recognition that the CFTC label has let them sidestep state gambling rules. The effort echoes the logic behind the UK’s push to bar under-16s from social media: keep the youngest users away from the funnel entirely.

Stephen Findeisen, the YouTuber who investigates online scams as Coffeezilla, says the business case for grabbing customers early is blunt. “You are incentivized to try to target them as soon as you can,” he said, because “the hardest wager to get is the first wager.” If the GAME Act passes, it stops ads from reaching anyone under 18; if it stalls, the 18-to-20 cohort the apps already court stays fully in play, and the lopsided math behind every trade keeps running exactly as it does today.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is trading on Polymarket or Kalshi the same as gambling?

Legally, no. These platforms are regulated as event-contract markets by the CFTC, so they call user activity a prediction on a probable outcome rather than a bet. In practice, addiction specialists say the rapid wager-and-feedback loop produces the same behavioral risks as betting.

How old do you have to be to use these apps?

Kalshi, Polymarket and Fliff are open to users starting at 18. That mirrors the minimum age for stock investing but sits below the 21-plus limit most US states apply to casinos and sportsbooks.

Do most people make money on prediction markets?

No. The study of 588 million Polymarket trades found 68.8% of users lost money, while the top 1% of accounts took 76.5% of all profits and the top 0.1% captured roughly half. Casual users lost most often on long-shot trades at extreme prices.

What would the GAME Act change?

It would prohibit social media companies and ad networks from targeting minors with sports betting and prediction-market ads, enforced by the FTC with fines up to $100,000 per advertisement. It does not raise the 18-plus age floor for using the platforms themselves.

Why are prediction markets regulated differently from sportsbooks?

Because they register as federal event-contract venues under the CFTC, they are not bound by the state-level gambling rules, bans and higher age limits that govern traditional sportsbooks. The GAME Act is one of the first federal efforts to close part of that gap.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial, investment or gambling advice. Trading on prediction markets and wagering apps carries a real risk of financial loss and can be addictive; anyone concerned about their own or another person’s behavior should consult a qualified professional or a problem-gambling helpline. Figures are accurate as of publication.