In September, world-renowned rap star, Drake, lost half a million dollars after betting on Israel Adesanya to beat Sean Strickland in UFC 293.
Drake has once again snuck into the limelight after another one of his attempted sports betting heists failed. He posted his bet on his Instagram story, due to his well-known partnership with the Australian betting company, Stake.
How did we get here?
According to Financial Times, in 2022, Drake signed a $100 million dollar endorsement deal with Stake, despite signing up in late 2021. From then on, Drake heavily advertised Stake from Twitch streams to Insta stories.
He has shown every bet he has made on Stake without knowing the outcome. For example, before the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Drake bet $1 million dollars on Argentina to win the final against France in regular time. As we know, Argentina did come out victorious…… on penalties.
Even ignoring this, Drake’s gambling history stretches back multiple years before his deal with Stake. With him being regarded as one of the best rappers of the 21st century and being one of the most followed humans on Instagram, how does his glorifying/advertising of gambling affect his teenage audience?
Where do teens pop up in this social epidemic?
A research article by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts claims, “By the time they get to high school, 60-80% of students reported that they gambled at least once in the past 12 months.” Considering that between 2021 and 2022, there was a 14.7% increase in betting revenue, it gives us a clear vision of how the gambling experience just keeps growing and growing as the years go by.
As time goes by, teens are more and more exposed to activities, including some type of gambling without even realizing it, such as lottery tickets, loot boxes, or microtransactions.
“For some people, it starts out as wanting to test their limits. I don’t think anyone sets out to be an addict.”
—Susannah McGlamery, Upper School Counselor
Considering that teenagers’ brains are still developing, we don’t have the ability to make sound decisions like we would if we were 25 years or older (when our pre-frontal cortexes are fully developed). That, combined with the fact that most teenagers are on social media platforms for several hours a day (a recent Gallup report states the US average is 4.8 hours a day), means that most of us are easily influenced. The fact that Drake posts all of his gambling on Instagram and has 144 million followers…well, he needs to take his influence under consideration.
What role does Twitch play in all this?
When people talk about online gambling (Crypto gambling), the live streaming service, Twitch, is usually first to cross their minds. Twitch doesn’t have any partnerships with any gambling companies. They do have a section for slots, but they don’t allow streamers to play yet. Sixty four of the top 1000 most viewed streamers have contributed to some kind of gambling.
A survey conducted in 2020 shows the age group of Twitch users in a percentage format. “Users in their teens and twenties accounted for more than three-quarters of Twitch’s active app user accounts in the United States.”
The graph below shows how 37.8% of Twitch viewers are teens and younger. This could result in kids experiencing early exposure to gambling while perceiving it in a normal fashion. These streamers that kids tune in to watch every day soon turn into their idols, and they start imitating them from their usernames right down to their behavior.
“Kids from a young age are educated in some way, about the risk of drinking and drugs…. But I don’t think that the gambling piece is something that is widely talked about.”
—Susannah McGlamery, Upper School Counselor
Drake vs. Stake
Stake vs. Drake Twitch streams are now well-known throughout the entire Twitch community. The most popular one took place on May 26th, 2022, where Drake won $17.9 million dollars playing online roulette.
In this specific stream, Drake started off with 5 million dollars. Within 25 minutes, Drake went up to 15 million, then back down to 8.3 million. After a few rolls, Drake bet on 11 black; and as if a miracle had happened, he won 17.9 million dollars. Then, just like that, his balance was up to 28 million dollars!
YouTuber Spencer Cornelia cleverly points out how this was a great example of why people are so attracted to gambling. “If you’ve ever wondered why people get addicted to gambling, this is the easiest example,” she says. “Drake turned 10 million dollars into 28 million dollars in 21 minutes.”
Believe it or not, Drake hit a peak of almost 30 million dollars in just 25 minutes of the stream; imagine that! But as the saying goes, “All good things must come to an end.” And for Drake, it definitely did. By the end of the 1h 30m stream, Drake was left with 200,000 dollars. He straight up lost 29.8 million dollars just like that.
Even with that huge loss of money, Drake still continued his happy mood claiming that, “I’ll make it back, I’ll be on late night.” From what seemed to be an attempt to cover up the huge loss of money, Stake and Drake came together to give away a million dollars.
So what does this mean for teens?
As a teenager myself, I believe that Drake has a massive influence on us. Personally, I don’t really hop on treads that celebrities do, but other teens that I know idolize and follow stars such as Drake. I believe that this scenario can’t be stopped unless Drake takes responsibility and stops advertising online gambling. He needs to follow the steps of most celebrities, which is to not advertise any negative subjects that may tarnish their reputation.
For teens, this could mean a dark future where nothing is being done to fix and repair the damage done by influencers. But this could also stem as redemption for all the people who were lost to addiction of any kind.
We have to raise awareness about the dangers of gambling before it consumes those around us. Titles such as “How the Sports Betting Industry Quietly Consumed America” should act as an alarm to the world of teens that if nothing is fixed, gambling problems could increase.
This was a really interesting article, I did not know about this trend in gambling and the role of influencers. I appreciated the statistics. It’s actually quite worrying.