39 states and D.C. allow sports gambling, but only 26 states require students to learn essential money skills before they graduate high school. What does that say about our priorities?

The rise of sports gambling in the United States

If you listen to podcasts or the radio, this will not come as news to you: sports gambling is booming in the United States today.

The growth of legalized sports betting in the U.S. took off when the Supreme Court overturned the federal ban on sports betting in 2018, leaving states to determine how to handle sports gambling how they saw fit.

Via legislation or ballot initiatives, sports gambling has since become legal in 39 states and Washington, D.C. as of writing in November 2024. The sports betting market has ballooned to $120 billion in total bets and a record $11 billion in revenues in 2023, per ESPN.

Source: American Gaming Association

The growth of financial education

The rise of financial education requirements has also been swift in recent years. In the same time period we’ve seen the number of states with standalone personal finance graduation requirements skyrocket from five states serving 16% of U.S. high schoolers in 2018 to 26 states serving 64% of high schoolers today.

See the 26 states on the NGPF LIVE U.S. Financial Education Dashboard.

Why this matters for students and society

States that legalize sports betting are gambling, in a sense. They wager the financial health of their communities for their chance at a slice of about $2 billion in annual tax revenue generated by sportsbooks. By state, the 2024 projected tax revenue from sports betting ranges from $25,000 in South Dakota to over $750 million in New York, per Sportsbook Review. The cost of the wager, though, may be incalculable.

You have likely already seen the immediate impacts the shift to legalized sports betting has had on your community - especially on your students. Unfortunately, despite the age restrictions on most sports betting apps and sites, young people are not immune from the risks posed by sports betting.

Students can easily slide into life-altering gambling pitfalls because:

• the vast majority of the gambling ads occur on social media, triggering FOMO and the get-rich-quick impulse.
• gambling info (odds, betting lines, predictions, etc) often lingers right next to sports scores, commentary, and highlights, making it easy to toggle between following your favorite team to betting on their next game.
• gambling apps often have lax age restrictions, rendering the typical 21-year (18 in D.C.) age limit largely toothless.
• gambling ads bury disclosures, warnings, and hotlines for problem gaming in endless legal jargon because that’s all they’re required to do.
• gambling promotions are deliberately designed to cue users into repeated gambling.

For society, gambling is often referred to as a “tax on the poor” because it can put already marginalized communities onto more and more precarious financial footing.

New research (The Financial Consequences of Legalized Sports Gambling, Gambling Away Stability: Sports Betting’s Impact on Vulnerable Households) shows that, following the legalization of sports betting in a given state:

1. Betting frequency and dollar amounts increase over time
2. Bettors’ investing (in stocks, bonds, real estate, retirement accounts, etc.) declines
3. Households with low savings increase credit card balances by $368 compared to high-savings households
4. Low-savings households max out credit cards more often than pre-legalization
5. All households carry balances of $550 more per quarter on credit cards
6. Bank account overdrafts increase,
7. Other risk-taking behaviors (especially playing the lottery) increase, and
8. Low-savings households increase their spending on entertainment expenses related to gambling (TV packages, snacks, alcoholic beverages, etc.)

How can financial education help?

The benefits of required financial education, for both individuals and communities, should be part of the toolkit we use to directly counter the threats posed by sports betting. Decades of research show unequivocally that financial education, when required in high school, helps graduates build financial stability.

According to a report NGPF commissioned this year from Tyton Partners, each student who is required to take a standalone personal finance course in high school benefits with $100,000 in additional lifetime earnings and cost savings compared to their peers. Most of this benefit comes from reduced cost of borrowing due to smarter credit management. That means fewer households carrying credit card balances, higher credit scores, and reduced cost of borrowing for life’s biggest purchases.

Of course, financial education takes practice, well-crafted curriculum, and teachers who are confident content experts. Side note on that last piece: NGPF just celebrated our 500,000th hour of Teacher Professional Development!

Adding sports gambling to our call for guaranteed financial education

NGPF is proud to be the first personal finance curriculum provider to offer a Gambling and Sports Betting Curriculum Unit that helps students confront the pitfalls of sports betting directly in the classroom without actually risking their dollars or financial health.

We have also begun to employ sports gambling (specifically, the threat it poses) in our advocacy work with our affiliate nonprofit, the NGPF Mission 2030 Fund. The sudden rise of legalized sports betting underscores the urgent need for financial education in perhaps more vivid terms than any other threat to consumers’ financial wellbeing.

I’ll leave you with a sports analogy.

It’s half time in a hard-fought game. The other team is trying to part young consumers from their money, and our team is trying to help them protect it. They have 40 points on the board for sports gambling, and we’ve got 26 points for effective financial education.

We’re underdogs. We’re looking around thinking, how are we possibly going to win this thing?

We’re going to win because of this community.

Our team at NGPF Mission 2030 Fund, NGPF’s affiliated nonprofit, has led winning advocacy campaigns in 17 of the last 18 states that adopted personal finance graduation requirements.

In every one of those wins, success was a whole team effort, with:

• teachers calling their state Representatives and Senators
• students and teachers delivering passionate testimony in Statehouses
• school clubs and student groups conducting letter-writing campaigns
• school administrators prepping their campuses for press opportunities
• district administrators sharing the success of their personal finance courses
• local nonprofit organizations going to bat for their constituents and clients, and
• local business leaders utilizing their influence and relationships for good

The remaining 24 states and DC will ALL get across the finish line with personal finance graduation requirements when we work together as a team.

Want to help win the game for your state?

Keep an eye out for bills with the tags “Mission 2030” and “Active” on NGPF’s Financial Education Bill Tracker if you’d like to get involved advocating for research-backed financial education policy in your state!

As you prepare to advocate, make use of NGPF’s Advocacy Toolkit, which offers:

1. a collection of research supporting personal finance graduation requirements,
2. survey tools to gather public support,
3. planning tools to overcome common objections,
4. a school board presentation that makes the case for personal finance,
5. media tools to write and pitch Opinion pieces to local news, and
6. a course checklist to ensure success on Day 1 of your personal finance class

Go team, and thank you for advocating for the most important class you never had!

About the Author

Christian Sherrill

Former teacher, forever financial education nerd. As NGPF's Director of Growth & Advocacy, Christian is laser-focused on our mission to guarantee all students a rigorous personal finance course before crossing the high school graduation stage. Having paid down over $40k in student loans in the span of 3 years - while living in the Bay Area on an entry level teacher's salary - he's eager to help the next generation avoid financial pitfalls one semester at a time.