The Surge of Women in Sports Betting

By Hank Blaine • August 18, 2023

One of sports betting’s stereotypes is that men bet on sports and women don’t. The truth is that women have always bet on sports. They just never had an outlet to do so on the regular until 2018 when sports betting started to become more mainstream. See below for a deeper dive into the women don’t bet on sports stereotype as well as trend analyzation.

Breaking Stereotypes and Analyzing Trends

The stereotype never existed and women watch sports

The stereotype that women don’t bet on sports never existed. The truth is that some women have always had an interest in betting on sports.

Women have also always bet on sports the way men have always bet on the sports. The difference is that because sports betting in the United States was illegal in every state except for Nevada until 2018, none of us had the opportunity to see data on women betting on sports.

The primary reason women bet on sports like men is because also like men, women play sports. The WNBA is a women only sports league. Women are NFL fans, NBA fans, MLB fans, watch the men’s and women’s soccer World Cup tournaments, watch the Olympics, and watch both the PGA and LPGA, just like men. Some women are also massive NASCAR fans, and watch UFC, boxing, and other sports.

Women invest in stocks, their 401Ks, and other things

Women also invest in the stock market, their 401Ks, and in houses, etc. Women have professional careers and know about things like cryptocurrency.

So in the end, women, just like men, fall into two umbrella sports betting categories. Sports bettors are either entertainment value players. Or they can be investment players.

Entertainment value players wager less than $100, sometimes as low as $5, for action on a game. Investment value players bet to profit. Women sports bettors, like men, fall into one of the categories.

Once sports betting became more mainstream, women naturally opened betting accounts

Since the stats for sports bettors weren’t readily available, we do not know exactly how many women had or didn’t have sports betting accounts before 2018.

We do know that men, by far, have jumped on the sports betting bandwagon than women. However, this appears to be more because of marketing.

For example, once a sportsbook opens in a specific state, the list of potential sports bettors leans heavily towards men. It’s not a reality list.

It’s a stereotype list, meaning because organizations believed women didn’t bet on sports, they created marketing lists with few if any women. That’s changing.

Now, companies are building lists of potential women sports bettors. As more marketing targets women sports bettors, more women will open sports betting accounts.

Trends suggest women will make up the majority of new sports bettors

Numbers don’t lie and the numbers suggest women will make up the majority of new sports bettors. More than 4.6 million women joined sports betting apps in 2021.

The growth rate of women customers is 63%, double that of men. A lot of the growth rate has to do with marketing focus.

Up until a couple of years ago, online sportsbooks focused on male customers. But since 2020, sportsbooks are putting marketing dollars towards women customers. Doing so has led to a massive increase in women sports bettors.

Like highlighted in the last section of this blog, the more marketing dollars that go to signing up women sports bettors, more women will open sports betting accounts. The trend won’t change until the target market changes.