The generation game: how operators can engage with young adults  

“Our dealer looks like Max Verstappen f***** a ventriloquist’s dummy but we won’t hold it against him,” shouts casino content creator Tim Myers as he clicks a $13,000 bet on a single hand of live blackjack. 

Unable to hear the acerbic remark about his appearance, the expressionless dealer slides an ace of hearts out of the shoe for the player, before dealing himself a queen.

“Ten for me now,” wails an exuberant Myers in a plea to the igaming gods. His prayers are answered as a 10 of clubs peels off, giving him 21, or blackjack. The dealer’s other card is a nine, which means Myers collects $32,500, including his stake, as 21 with just two cards pays out at odds of 3/2.

Myers, a dairy farmer from New Zealand who resides in Calgary, Canada, and goes by the alias ‘Tim Naki’, became a bit of a social media star earlier this year for staking 10 cents every day for each Instagram follower he had on one hand of blackjack. 

Back in February, when the Kiwi began documenting the journey in his inimitable style, he had 15,000 followers. So, his first bet was $1,500, which duly won. 

But it didn’t take long for the follower count to rocket to 1.3 million, in parallel with the size of his bets. 

“He’s a very personable guy and the content is great – it’s snackable,” says online casino consultant Brendan Tinnelly. “Obviously you have the win/loss excitement, which is a big hook.” 

Uploaded to Instagram, the micro-influencer’s conveyor belt of unvarnished and expletive-filled content lets audiences vicariously experience the highs and lows of high-stakes blackjack, even if doubts have been expressed about the veracity of his winning streaks, or if he’s even playing with his own money. 

Plus, the nosebleed stakes and wild swings in his bankroll on the crypto casino sites he uses are enough to give a regulated operator’s responsible gambling officer heart palpitations. 

Either way, there’s no denying the engagement this type of content generates, with some of his Reels each racking up more than six million views. 

Tim Myers, AKA Tim Naki

A good chunk of his audience is likely to be Gen Z, or those born after 1997. Data resource Statista shows 18- to 24-year-olds account for the largest segment (31.7% as of April 2024) of worldwide users on Instagram – the fourth-most-popular website in the world, according to web traffic tracking tool Similarweb’s July data. 

It’s partly why the Meta-owned platform heavily features igaming content, particularly involving crypto operators. 

Take Stake as an example. The crypto and fiat operator’s principal Instagram account has 911,000 followers – more than four times that of one of the most social media-savvy betting brands around, Paddy Power. 

Canadian rapper Drake often posts clips of his high-stakes casino sessions and monstrous sports bets with Stake to his combined 184.2 million followers across Instagram and X, in the process amplifying the operator’s brand. 

Stake’s parent company, Easygo, also operates livestreaming platform Kick which, with its loose moderation, has rapidly become a serious challenger to Amazon-owned Twitch. Total time watched of Kick content in Q1 2024 exceeded 400 million hours. 

Unsurprisingly, Stake features heavily on the platform thanks to its paid army of micro-influencers and streamers broadcasting its games. Kick’s largest audience in terms of visitors is those aged 18 to 24 (38% as of July 2024), according to Similarweb data. 

And judging by the viewer counts, users seem to lap up the content featuring games being played on Stake and fellow crypto gambling sites like Roobet and Rollbit. 

Tinnelly explains: “Twitch clamped down , so they built their own streaming platform with Kick because they realised it’s so powerful – it’s like meeting that new generation of gamers.

“A lot of gambling marketing is very old fashioned and crude, whereas you look at Stake; these crypto guys are really building communities. They are showing the games and doing it on social and digital in a very native way.” 

A good chunk of those consuming this type of content are likely to own cryptocurrencies, too. Data released in April by insurance platform Policygenius found that one in five (20%) Gen Z-ers in the US own digital coins, eclipsing those who own stocks (18%). 

Crypto gamblers tend to be Web3 evangelists as well, suggests Matthew D’Emanuele, CEO of Yolo Entertainment, the company behind crypto gambling sites Sportsbet.io and Bitcasino.io. 

He comments: “This new audience coming through are far more educated in the Web3 crypto space than the vast majority of the industry. That brings a very new type of problem as suddenly we’re not educating players; we’re being educated by player demand and by player expectations – that’s a shift for sure.” 

D’Emanuele goes on to say: “That new audience coming through wants to connect via MetaMask, they want to be NFT-driven, they are used to buying skins for CS:GO – we really need to make sure we can mirror those expectations.” 

Casino streams are an important marketing tool for crypto operators

Say Venn 

One operator that very much gears its products around younger adults is esports betting-focused Rivalry, with the Toronto-based firm previously suggesting the Venn diagram of Gen Z, gamblers, gamers and crypto enthusiasts or the crypto curious “has an extremely high degree of overlap”. 

Cody Luongo, Rivalry’s head of communications, says: “None of the traditional brands really feel like they’re for a Gen Z demographic or a younger customer we have taken a different path and positioned our brand at the intersection of gaming and internet culture, and now we are expanding into Web3 and crypto.” 

He may have a point regarding traditional brands. Hosting a webinar in July on the UK online gambling market, Alun Bowden, SVP of strategic insight at Eilers & Krejcik Gaming (EKG), remarked that many heritage brands “feel a bit middle-aged and unexciting” and don’t speak to a younger audience. 

While Paddy Power occupies a podium position in the UK, Bowden singled it out for feeling like a bookmaker “your dad uses” and an “FHM-era brand”, a reference to the 1990s lads’ mag. 

Thought to be the UK’s leading operator, Paddy Power stablemate Sky Bet has historically appealed to slightly younger bettors, probably aided by its deep links with the English Football League and broadcaster Sky Sports. 

YouGov reported, in 2022, those considering signing up to Sky Bet “skew younger” compared to those mulling over other major betting brands, with 34% of those “eyeing” the Flutter-owned operator being 18-34 years old. 

These findings chime with Andy Wright, who spent seven years until 2021 in senior trading roles at Sky Bet, yet he recalls how the operator struggled to retain players as they got older. 

“We did a lot of work looking at where we were losing customers. Around their mid-30s was when Sky Bet would start to lose them to bet365,” he says.

“The hypothesis was that as they became mature as a sports bettor, bet365’s UX and the front-end was a bit more sophisticated, whereas Sky Bet was seen as a bit gimmicky and entry level.” 

While a recreational bookmaker like Sky Bet may be a go-to option for twentysomethings, there are very few brands specifically aimed at this demographic. This sector is dominated by a whole host of legacy names, some of which have been around for decades. 

Midnite was very much a Gen Z-focused esports betting startup when it was founded in 2018, yet even this UK-licensed operator has pivoted to what appears, on face value, to be a regular digital bookmaker with sports betting and casino front and centre. 

The US online gambling market is in a similar boat in that it could already be classed as a mature market consisting of legacy DFS brands (FanDuel and DraftKings) and long-established casino operators (BetMGM and Caesars). 

Instead, the companies behind what is classed as pick’em DFS, otherwise known as DFS+ – where users predict whether an athlete will score over or under a set line – are arguably leading the way right now at connecting with Gen Z sports fans with their brand positioning and products. 

The likes of PrizePicks, Underdog Fantasy and Sleeper have disrupted DFS with pick’em games that are likened to pseudo prop betting but are far simpler and quicker to play than the time-intensive nature of the traditional salary cap format. 

Obviously, DFS operators benefit from the fact regulations tend to allow companies to onboard customers at 18 (sports betting is 21 in most legal states), plus California and Texas, the country’s two most-populous states, continue to be devoid of legal wagering options. DFS+ fills that gap. 

EKG says DFS+ firms’ “reach and brand recognition among Gen Z players” makes them “compelling acquisition targets”

PrizePicks seems to be particularly proficient in building communities on social media, too. The Atlanta-headquartered firm has amassed a combined 666,700 followers across Instagram, X and TikTok, as well as nearly 450,000 members on gaming-centric social platform Discord. 

“One reason PrizePicks and Underdog are popular is branding – it’s that LADbible approach,” says Wright, who was SVP of trading at Fanatics Betting and Gaming between 2022 and 2024. 

“The products are a little bit easier to understand, a bit more fun to play, a bit more intuitive maybe an Underdog is that entry to betting that Americans need because they’ve not grown up around it.” 

He continues: “FanDuel and DraftKings aren’t going to miss a trick – DraftKings bought Jackpocket and FanDuel will no doubt be looking at things. If there’s a nice entry-level product somewhere between free-to-play and real betting, they’d be mad not to look at it.” 

On that point, in an edition of its newsletter, published at the end of August, EKG described DFS+ operators as “compelling acquisition targets”. 

The boutique analyst firm pointed to DFS+ customer databases in non-betting states besides “their reach and brand recognition among Gen Z players”.

With the reach and engagement some of the DFS+ and sweepstakes operators generate in the US, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility we could see one of the larger and more established sports betting operators launch a secondary brand. 

In other words, a new betting brand that better communicates and resonates with those sports fans in their early 20s. 

Luongo, who is of the opinion no gambling brand is “elastic enough” to resonate with all demographics, comments: “Rivalry probably doesn’t appeal to the 35- to 40-year-old traditional sports bettor, although we might appeal to one a bit more tech savvy, who likes crypto and plays video games. 

“I also predict operators might consider a multi-brand strategy where they spin up a new brand that is a bit more hip and Gen Z-focused.” 

Rivalry’s in-house games studio looks to “merge entertainment and video game-like gameplay”

I am a one in 10 

Back on this side of the Atlantic, UK consumers aged 18-24 account for 12% of the population and 10% of all gamblers in the market, according to data published in late 2023 by YouGov. 

While one in 10 doesn’t sound all that significant to an online betting operator, this cohort will naturally become a bigger segment of adult consumers as time passes. 

In fact, Gen Z is expected to make up 27% of the global workforce by 2025. Coming back to the YouGov data, the market research firm reported that only a third (36%) of 18- to 24-year-olds had placed a bet on sports with an online bookmaker in the past month (at the time they were surveyed), compared with 47% of older gamblers. 

They are also half as likely as older gamblers to have played the National Lottery online (19% vs 40%). 

However, this demographic is more likely to participate in fantasy sports for money (11% vs 5%) and esports (6% vs 2%). Horseracing doesn’t hold much appeal (18% vs 41%), yet they show a greater propensity to bet on boxing (13% vs 9%), tennis (12% vs 8%) and motor racing (10% vs 5%). 

Anecdotal evidence also suggests younger bettors prefer to back athlete performances rather than teams, underlined by the explosive growth of player prop markets. Manchester City’s Erling Haaland to have more than 2.5 shots on target, for example. 

“The younger generation is a lot more loyal to specific players than a specific team; that’s a big shift we see now,” confirms Niklas Fallsjö, head of sportsbook innovation at Kwiff. 

“Data providers will need to go wider and deeper with their collection of data to be able to offer more prop markets, so this definitely comes from the demands of this generation.” 

Paddy Power saw double the bet stakes on player markets on Euro 2024 compared to the 2022 World Cup, while Kambi reported that players’ shots on target was the third-highest pre-match market in terms of turnover during the tournament, only beaten by full-time result and total goals. 

By extension, the obvious big shift that is firmly here to stay is the explosion in bet builders, or same game parlays (SGPs) for our North American readers. 

Kambi reported 18% of all Euro 2024 bets were bet builders. Across the tournament and this summer’s Copa América, there were more than 17 million unique bet builders struck with the supplier’s clients.

Placing negative EV (expected value) bets might be an anathema to sharp sports bettors grinding 3% ROI a year with carefully researched plays, yet there’s no denying the appeal of jackpot-style sports bets. 

Quite clearly, recreational bettors – particularly the twentysomething sports fans – revel in the entertainment aspect and staking a little for the chance to win a lot. They don’t really expect to win; it’s akin to buying a scratchcard when stopping off at the supermarket for groceries. 

“Bet builders are the lottery product for the next generation,” Wright notes, while adding that bookmakers showcasing their most popular pre-packaged bet builders on the homepage “taps into FOMO”. 

Moreover, sweating that $5,000 payout from a $5 SGP can provide an adrenaline buzz, while friends on online messaging apps can congratulate the win, or commiserate the unlucky bettor if one leg sinks the bet in agonising style. 

“They don’t see it as they lost $5. They see it as they lost $5,000,” ESPN sports betting reporter David Purdum told EGR North America recently. 

The ability to combine all manner of bets into a bet builder is an area the industry is focused on right now, says Fallsjö, adding: “If you have content out there, just make sure you have smart algorithms to calculate the odds and to give the opportunity for users to combine anything they like. 

“It’s about removing limitations – the younger generation is a bit less understanding of limitations. They expect everything to be possible, as that’s how they interact with apps and products.” 

Yet Fallsjö warns too many markets and betting opportunities could be off-putting for Gen Z. 

He remarks: “The industry still provides all this content, but it’s not really relevant. The younger generation, they want to have relevant content with precision, and they want it to be personalised this is going to be the biggest challenge for everyone because it’s going to require a good rethink of the sports betting user interface.” 

One in five Gen Z-ers in the US own digital coins, according to PolicyGenius

Game the system 

Whether or not Gen Z tends to watch live sport on TV to track their bets or bet in-play is debatable. What we do know is live TV is a turn-off generally among young people. 

The latest annual study by communications regulator Ofcom into the UK’s media habits, published at the end of July, revealed 16- to 24-year-olds watch a mere 20 minutes of live TV daily, compared with 93 minutes a day spent on video-sharing platforms. Less than half (48%) watch broadcast TV in an average week. 

When not scrolling through TikTok content, video gaming and casual mobile gaming are a popular pastime. In fact, games rewards platform ZBD surveyed more than 2,000 gamers in the US aged 18 to 25 and found almost two-thirds (65%) play games for more than three hours each day. 

The findings, released in May, also showed 33% of males game for more than five hours a day. Casual mobile games were the most popular category generally, played by 57% of those quizzed. 

What we have seen of late is a reinvention of the online casino vertical, with content drawing inspiration from casual mobile games to create titles perhaps less intimidating than slots. 

Tinnelly, who in the past worked at Nintendo translating video games from Japanese into English, says: “We have gone from almost no material innovation in slots development to suddenly crash games, mine games and instant games. 

“They might not be as lucrative, but they are amazing at bringing in that new player who is used to playing mobile games and who wants more interactivity than just hitting the spin button.” 

Indeed, the inexorable rise of fast-paced crash games specifically has been a standout trend, so much so that themes have evolved far beyond 2D planes and rockets to now featuring everything from fictitious stock market price movements to football ‘keepie-uppies’. One crypto casino site even has a crash game featuring rap royalty Snoop Dogg, the goal being to cash out the rising multiplier before his ‘blunt’ burns out. 

In parts of the world such as Latam and Africa, crash games have become a staple of casino lobbies. And that’s significant when you consider Africa is the continent with the world’s youngest population. In fact, 70% of sub-Saharan Africa is under the age of 30. 

For operators and suppliers more generally, though, the focus remains on providing entertainment-led playing experiences, especially for those who grew up playing casual games. 

Rivalry’s unique casino lobby eschews the ubiquitous wall of slots titles and instead resembles a retro video games store, for example. 

Luongo explains: “Something like nine out of 10 Gen Z-ers play video games weekly, so we know it’s part of their entertainment consumption. We build original casino games from scratch. 

“We try to merge entertainment and video game-like gameplay into the casino playing experience, so it’s on a par with the entertainment this generation likes to consume.”

That said, he does note how Gen Z are generally “lower value players”. Indeed, speak to most regulated operators and they’ll tell you this segment of the player base tend to stake less than Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) and Gen X (born 1965 to 1980). The obvious explanation is they tend to earn less and, therefore, don’t possess the same levels of disposable income. 

But that’s a good thing; responsible operators seeking sustainable growth certainly don’t want their younger customers betting more than they can afford to lose. 

And especially not when studies have shown 18- to 24-year-olds are more likely to take risks or act impulsively. It’s why certain firms have spending limits for under 25s. 

LiveScore Group CEO Sam Sadi warns: “As a gambling operator, you need to refrain from focusing too much on the younger generations because the wealth and disposable income that is needed for betting is in higher age brackets.” 

Future generations 

As Gen Z becomes an ever-more meaningful segment of operators’ customers, no one can say for certain if the way Gen Z-ers consume media, watch sport or play games will fundamentally alter the online gambling landscape. 

Or whether we’ll likely see an influx of new betting brands to cater to this demographic, with legacy incumbents potentially usurped. 

What is clear, though, is Gen Z will be a catalyst for innovation, whether that be greater blurring of the lines between casino gaming and casual mobile games, or future developments around player-specific betting markets, bet builders or in-play. 

Or even perhaps an overhaul of the UX to make products, especially mobile sportsbooks, more intuitive for young adults new to betting. 

Wright argues for the need to “solve the UX” rather than stripping down a sportsbook to its bare bones, however. 

He says: “I’d be amazed if anyone at Amazon has ever said, ‘Should we offer less stuff so that customers can find things easier?’ They would always improve the search functionality. No one at Google says, ‘Let’s have fewer pages on the internet.’ You just make the personalisation better.” 

Just as one of EGR’s phone conversations was wrapping up – with casino consultant Tinnelly – he touches on a valid point: the need for the industry to employ Gen Z staff. 

That way, businesses are better in tune with trends and consumer behaviours. This supports what Yolo Entertainment’s D’Emanuele said earlier about crypto gamblers often being more knowledgeable than the operators. 

“This is a very insular industry,” Tinnelly remarks. “It’s people moving from company to company without a lot of fresh blood and fresh ideas, certainly at the right level of an organisation to drive change.” 

His key piece of advice? “It’s difficult to build a product for a customer if that customer is not in your company.”