The Gambling Industry's Newest Bet? Women

"I should have put my rent money on that."

It's one of the first TikToks I see after the Love Island USA finale. A woman screams at her TV as the winners are announced, lamenting the money she could have made if she'd backed them. Around it, my feed is filled with videos encouraging viewers to turn their encyclopaedic knowledge of reality TV into cash. The message is clear: your pop culture obsession doesn't have to be a guilty pleasure. It could be profitable.

For decades, gambling companies largely targeted men, building businesses around football, horse racing and poker. But a noticeable shift is underway. Increasingly, women are being treated as the industry's next major growth market, with products and marketing designed around reality television, celebrity culture, influencers and social media rather than traditionally male-coded interests.

Prediction markets have ramped up their culture offerings, allowing people to trade on reality TV, Spotify streams, and even Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding. Currently, there is a $548,978 trading volume on the Love Island UK market, with Lorenzo and Julia leading.

The strategy reflects a broader cultural shift. Women today have greater financial independence, higher workforce participation and are investing in greater numbers than previous generations. Fidelity's 2025 Women and Investing Study found Gen Z and Millennial women are becoming increasingly engaged with their finances, while the proportion of women who own investments continues to rise.

A recent study from Deakin University found that gambling promotions linked to influencers, women's sport and lifestyle content increased the normalisation and social acceptability of gambling among women aged 18 to 40. Rather than trying to persuade women to engage with products designed for men, companies are redesigning the products—and the marketing—to meet women where they already are.

This is reflected across social media, as more content is dedicated to promoting financial literacy cheat sheets, stock tips, and the girlification of retirement accounts. Some of it blurs with self care and empowerment messaging, designed to be easily digestible, from get-ready-with-me videos, quippy listicles, and girl math equations that really work. It’s girl’s-girl behaviour delivered with a forehead kiss to your savings account.

"Women are actively seeking financial participation and literacy," explains consumer behaviour expert Ammarah Ahmed. "The challenge is that gambling companies are adapting to this content style too. You now have women who are engaged with reality television, celebrity culture and social media who are also being invited to see those interests as financial opportunities."

Rather than presenting gambling as risk-taking, these campaigns often frame it as savvy decision-making. Rather than betting, users are encouraged to think of themselves as making predictions, participating in markets or applying knowledge they already possess.

Dr Devin Proctor, a digital anthropologist and professor at Elon University, believes this represents a much broader cultural change. "This communicates to a whole new population of fans that their cultural knowledge has economic value," he explains. "The same knowledge that has often been dismissed as trivial or 'trashy' is suddenly presented as something capable of generating capital. What's changing isn't necessarily the activity itself—it's the moral framing around it."

His description of the "financialisation of cultural expertise" captures what feels so distinctive about this new wave of marketing. Knowledge of football statistics has long been monetised through sports betting. What's new is encouraging women to view their expertise in reality television, celebrity culture or internet trends through exactly the same commercial lens.

The marketing reflects that evolution. Influencer partnerships, creator-style videos and user-generated content dominate feeds where traditional gambling adverts would once have felt jarring. Instead of loud bookmakers and football pundits, viewers are met with relatable creators, casual conversations and lifestyle aesthetics that blur the line between entertainment, recommendation and advertising.

Dr. Rey Junco, a licensed trauma therapist and research psychologist, says he’s concerned about gambling being disguised as lifestyle content. “There isn’t any good regulation around this and therefore can present a risk for those who are prone to such addictions. If you lower the cultural and social barriers to gambling (‘hey this is fun, all the people you look up to are doing it’), more people will gamble and more people will develop problematic gambling addictions.”

Aside from its current regulations, Dr. Junco isn’t convinced the app will go further with its user protections. "I absolutely think that platforms should be better stewards of public health," Dr. Junco continues. "Do I have hope that they will? Absolutely not. We've seen this time and time again."

All of this is also happening at a particularly dark time for many people: the economy feels tumultuous, the housing market is in crisis almost everywhere, and politically, nothing feels even close to being in favour of women. So, the desire to find the golden ticket is higher than ever. Gambling companies are just hoping you’ll believe it’s on their app.

“The long-term problem here is not just individual financial loss in an economy where the younger generation is already struggling to be able to afford things like buying a house,” Ahmed warns. “It's what happens when a generation grows up with this behaviour hardwired into them before they could ever even tell the difference.”

The branding may be softer and the influencers may look different from the bookmakers of old. But beneath the lifestyle aesthetics and empowerment messaging lies a familiar business model: finding new customers and convincing them that this time, it's different.