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The gambling industry has a growing concern: college-age gamers.
As gambling becomes more popular among young players, some of the largest online gambling operators are beginning to target college students for responsible gambling education.
The group launched its first national educational campaign this month aimed at educating college students and college-age individuals about responsible gaming.
Eight gambling operators — representing 85% of the online gaming industry in the United States — partnered to create the Responsible Online Gaming Association last March to promote responsible gaming. BetMGM, DraftKings, and FanDuel are all members.
The campaign website features short videos discussing mental health, financial literacy, and responsible gambling. Over several weeks, ROGA will be doing in-person learning sessions and workshops at college campuses.
“This is an age group that's either going to be engaged in this activity in the near future or may already be engaged, and they don't have this information available now,” said Jennifer Shatley, executive director of ROGA. “Most schools don't have gambling policies, gambling education, or anything around the topic.”
The move comes at a time when calls to the statewide gambling helpline run by the Council on Compulsive Gambling of Pennsylvania suggest that problem gambling could be a growing issue among 18- to 24-year-olds.
In 2024, almost 12% of calls seeking help with problem gambling came from that age range, more than double the percent in 2017, the year online gambling was legalized in Pennsylvania, according to annual helpline reports.
Young people gambling online is a particular concern because, as Shatley puts it, “They are online all the time.”
Online gambling appeals and is intuitive to young people because they grew up with technology, said Michelle Malkin, director of the Gambling Research & Policy Initiative at East Carolina University.
“When they look at a sports app, they just understand it immediately because it looks a lot like the kind of games they play,” she said. “They are there to appeal to those people who are on their phones 24/7, which is that age group.”
Almost 20% of Pennsylvania adults engaged in some form of online gambling last year, according to an annual report from the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs and Pennsylvania State University.
Of those who gambled exclusively online, around 29% were ages 20 to 24.
“Online [gambling] is trying to entice a younger audience,” said Gillian Russell, assistant research professor at Penn State and co-investigator on the report. “A lot of younger gamblers or younger individuals in general aren't necessarily as interested in traditional forms of gambling, so the online modes are a better way to kind of capture that younger audience.”
There are few educational resources on responsible gaming aimed at the college-age demographic, and much of the existing education around college gambling focuses on student-athletes, Shatley said.
This is likely because student-athletes are almost twice as likely to gamble on sports than non-athletes, according to a 2023 study on University of North Carolina students done by the Gambling Research & Policy Initiative.
A 2023 study by the NCAA found that over half of 18- to 22-year-olds had bet on sports, and 4% gambled on sports daily. Around 6% reported losing more than $500 in a single day.
And with large sporting events like March Madness, FIFA World Cup, and the MLB All-Star Game on the horizon, betting opportunities to gain and lose money are plenty.
Finances is one of the reasons ROGA is focused on college students.
“They have newfound financial freedom. They may not have the information they need for good financial habits, good money skills, and that's very tied to responsible gaming,” Shatley said.
For many colleges and universities, counseling centers are the best resource for struggling students. Representatives for Point Park University, Chatham University, and Indiana University of Pennsylvania said while no formal programs exist on campus tailored to students struggling with gambling addiction, there are other counseling resources.
“We do maintain plenty of support services for students, so if one were to have a problem in that area, there would be multiple ways for them to seek counseling and other help,” said Lou Corsaro, assistant vice president of public relations at Point Park
While it's not atypical for colleges and universities to rely on counseling centers or external resources to address issues such as gambling addiction, some experts are encouraging educational institutions to go further.
Malkin and the Gambling Research & Policy Initiative are developing an educational curriculum for colleges to use, similar to the common drug and alcohol education that colleges provide students.
“Colleges are concerned about gambling but don't know what to do,” she said. "We know that campuses are going to be fairly receptive to getting stuff because they don't want to see their students using things like financial aid and stuff like that to gamble and then having to drop out because they lose all their money.”
