LAS VEGAS (AP) — Most U.S. adults think betting on professional sports should be legal — but they don’t feel the same way about college sports, according to a new poll.
The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that about 6 in 10 Americans think betting on professional sports should be legal in their state, but only about 4 in 10 U.S. adults say the same thing about legalized wagering on college sports. More than half oppose legal betting on college sports.
After years of opposition, professional sports leagues have embraced legalized wagering, agreeing to lucrative sponsorship deals with gambling companies in the aftermath of a 2018 Supreme Court ruling that allowed states to legalize sports betting.
College conferences and teams have largely stayed away – a separation reflected in the poll results, as some Americans continue to think there should be a distinction between professional and college sports.
Colleen Plowman, who lives in Kansas, is among those who think betting should be legal for professional sports but not for college. She says that younger athletes might be less well-equipped to handle the pressure of having bets placed on their games.
“I think once they get out of school — not that it couldn’t happen — they have more maturity to deal with all the pressures that go along with that,” said Plowman, who said she does not bet. “I assume there would be a lot of pressure on kids at that age. I think there would be more pressure on college kids than it would be on pro.”
Sports betting is now legal in 38 states and the District of Columbia, and Missouri narrowly passed a ballot measure in November that paves the way for legalization this year. Each state with legalized sports betting has its own set of regulations regarding what can be wagered on and in what form.
Despite these shifts, Americans aren’t more open to either kind of sports betting than they were a few years ago. They about as likely to say betting on professional or college sports should be legal as they were in 2019.
And the public appetite for sports betting doesn’t seem to have grown, either. In the new poll, about one-quarter of U.S. adults said they “frequently” or “occasionally” bet on professional or college sports with friends or through an office pool, down from 36% in 2019. About one-quarter said they bet at least “frequently” in person at casinos, and 14% said they regularly wager online, both of which are generally unchanged from six years ago.
The growth of legal sports betting has prompted concerns about increased stress on athletes and the potential for wrongdoing.
A suspected gambling ring under federal investigation for its role in two NBA betting cases also was reportedly involved in unusual wagering activity on at least three men’s college basketball programs. In 2023, about two dozen college athletes were criminally charged after a state investigation in Iowa into illegal sports wagering, though some charges were later dropped. That same year, Alabama fired its baseball coach amid an investigation into suspicious bets involving a Crimson Tide game.
Jodie Campbell, who lives in California, agrees that if sports betting is going to be legal in her state, that it should be for pro events and not college. But Campbell, who said she does not bet, had issues with legalized wagering in general.
“I feel a little bit conflicted about it,” Campbell said. “On one hand, I think sometimes with betting you can create a situation where there’s an opportunity for dishonesty, fraud or misconduct. … I’m just not a big fan of gambling and betting generally. If it was up to me, it would be great not to have any of that. I prefer to keep it out of sports involving young people, like high school, college level.”
John Markley, who lives in Delaware, says he thinks both forms of gambling should be legal but with some limits at the college level.
“It’s OK to bet (on) a team, I believe, but individually, probably not,” said Markley, who said he regularly bets small amounts of money. “… It seems (athletes would) be more vulnerable to influence to throw a bet, influence a game, something like that. Probably anyone is, but probably a younger, less affluent person might be more subject to influencing a game on behalf of a bettor.”
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Sanders contributed from Washington, D.C.
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The AP-NORC poll of 1,112 adults was conducted Feb. 6-10, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
