Online betting is off to the races - and this summer the adoption curve started looking like a hockey stick.
According to a new analysis by Bank of America - which can see every ACH, debit and credit card payment its customers make to and from sportsbooks, horse-racing platforms and prediction markets their own customers make:
The bank credits the summer spike to the World Cup and "promotions and buzz" around prediction markets, and fair enough: every adoption curve has a catalyst. What matters is what the base looks like once the catalyst passes, and here the seasonal pattern is instructive. First-time users jump with every major sports season, and the 2025 football season - which the bank defines as September through February, so it sweeps in the NFL, college ball and most of the NBA and NHL - produced 22% more first-timers than the year before. Each season enrolls a larger freshman class. The class that enrolled this summer was three times the size of January's, and it arrived right before the busiest stretch of the calendar.
Nor is this something people try once and forget. Per a CivicScience survey cited in the note, 34% of online sports bettors wager weekly and 23% bet daily; fewer than one in five are the several-times-a-year Super Bowl crowd. That is the engagement profile of a social app, not a lottery ticket.
The turning pointBy generation, Gen Z (48%) and Millennials (40%) accounted for 88% of online betting activity in July. Gen X managed 9%; Baby Boomers, 3%. And as recently as this spring, Millennials were the larger group. Gen Z overtook them this summer - a shift BofA describes as a "turning point" in the composition of online bettors.
BofA defines Gen Z as anyone born after 1995, which means the oldest members are turning 30 this year and the cohort came of age alongside legal, app-based sports betting. BofA points out that younger consumers have consistently been first to adopt every emerging digital platform - crypto, BNPL, online marketplaces - and that betting appears to be following the same script.
When it comes to income - betting activity is split almost evenly across terciles - 37% lower, 34% middle, 29% higher.
Oh it's investing!According to a BofA survey conducted in March, 20% of respondents said they consider sports betting a form of investing, with Gen Z twice as likely as everyone else to say so. Across every generation, buying event contracts on a prediction market was more likely to be classified as investing than placing a sportsbook wager.
Prediction markets have listed contracts on almost anything - whether a politician sips water on camera during a speech, how many flu cases the year will bring - dressed in the language of derivatives: standardized, exchange-traded, resolved at a point in time. BofA notes that prediction markets, crypto, retail trading and sports betting all share "community participation and real-time pricing," which is a polite way of saying they share a user interface. To a generation raised on the Fed put, zero-day options and a community tab, a football game is simply another underlying.
And then there's the red tape...Naturally, the regulators have noticed - and, naturally, their first move is a jurisdictional fight. The CFTC's position, per BofA's public-policy team, is that certain event contracts traded on federally regulated exchanges are derivatives under the Commodity Exchange Act and therefore federal turf. State and tribal regulators counter that contracts tied to sports and entertainment are gambling with extra steps and belong under existing state gaming, licensing and consumer-protection law. Lawmakers from both parties and both chambers have filed bills. The CFTC has also opened a rulemaking on perpetual futures and issued an advisory warning event-contract venues away from sweepstakes-style rewards and prizes "based on pure chance" - the sort of promotional program that helped fill the summer's freshman class - and, per BofA Global Research, is trying to draw a brighter line between prediction markets and sportsbooks by targeting in-house market making, incentive programs and "casino style odds."
None of it slows adoption. Arguing over whether a contract is a "derivative" or a "wager" is an argument over who gets to regulate and tax the growth, not whether the growth happens. By the time the rulebook is written, the users will already be there. Most of them already are.
And it's not even football season yet...
Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 20:30Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,
The use of commercially available cannabis edibles impairs people's driving ability, even after several hours of consumption, a study has found.
Published in the JAMA Network Open journal on Aug. 31, the peer-reviewed study looked at simulated driving performance after the consumption of cannabis edibles.
Conducted in a Canadian hospital, the study analyzed data of 40 people aged 19-45 years. They received gummies containing delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) - the main psychoactive chemical in cannabis that causes brain-altering effects. Various combinations of THC and placebo edibles were given to achieve four doses of THC exposure - 0 mg, 2 mg, 10 mg, and 20 mg.
The study measured the standard deviation of lateral position (SDLP), which assesses how drivers adjust lane position and is used to evaluate the effects of medicines and illegal drugs.
Researchers found that SDLP was "significantly increased" at 20 mg and 10 mg doses compared with the placebo at two and five hours post-consumption, suggesting greater difficulty in maintaining lane position.
Reaction time and the standard deviation of speed were "negatively influenced" among drivers due to THC exposure, the study said. The individual's willingness to drive was also found to have "significantly decreased" at 20 mg exposure, according to the study.
For the highest dose of 20 mg, whole-blood THC concentrations peaked at 3.4 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL). This falls within the 1 to 5 ng/mL limits for drivers set by some U.S. states.
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto highlighted the link between driving impairment and blood THC levels in an Aug. 31 statement.
All peak blood THC concentrations in the study were below or near common thresholds used for roadside enforcement, the statement said. This was true even among those who consumed the highest dose.
"Many people may underestimate the impairment caused by cannabis edibles," Dr. Christine Wickens, co-author of the study, said in the statement. "Our findings show that commonly consumed doses can significantly affect critical driving skills, reinforcing the need for caution when making decisions about driving after use."
The study was funded by a grant from Public Safety Canada. Two authors reported conflicts of interest, including receiving grants from pharmaceutical companies.
In an April 20 statement, the University of Colorado Anschutz also reported similar findings. In these studies, people were made to use a driving simulator before and after consuming cannabis.
Cannabis was found to affect driving performance, especially lane-control measures, such as lane departures and weaving. Inhaling cannabis showed smaller and less consistent changes, while edible cannabis resulted in "more noticeable impairment, including slower speeds and increased lane variability and departures," the statement said.
US Cannabis ReclassificationIn the United States, the Trump administration recently reclassified cannabis, or marijuana, under the Controlled Substances Act. On April 23, the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration announced placing some cannabis products under Schedule III of the Act.
Schedule III drugs are deemed to have lower abuse potential and are accepted for medical use. The classification is only applicable to cannabis items approved by the Food and Drug Administration or regulated by a state medical marijuana license.
The American Trucking Associations (ATA) has raised concerns about public safety risks arising from the reclassification.
In an April 24 statement, Brenna Lyles, ATA's vice president of safety policy, highlighted concerns about rescheduling cannabis without proper safeguards to preserve the U.S. Department of Transportation's (USDOT's) testing authority for workers carrying out safety-sensitive jobs.
"Absent clear protections for USDOT's marijuana testing authority, a policy shift could undermine the Department's drug- and alcohol-testing program and weaken highway safety," Lyles said.
"That risk is compounded by the lack of a reliable, widely accepted standard to measure marijuana impairment, whether roadside or before a driver gets behind the wheel."
Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 20:05The data center debate isn't going so well for the builders, as Americans far and wide seriously oppose the construction of new data centers near where they live. One state, however, thinks it can incentivize residents.
Country roads take West Virginians home across the Virginia state line near Charles Town, where the data center debate has intensified. (Charlie Creitz/Fox News)Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R) has unveiled seven principles aligned with 2025 legislation to reduce and eventually eliminate state income tax. Under the plan, West Virginia would set aside 50% of its revenue from approved hyperscale data center projects towards the elimination of the state personal income tax - though let's be clear: the poor, rural residents they'll be building the DCs next to don't pay income tax - so no benefit to them. Middle class voters (and up), however, will have all sorts of reasons to support the move.
"Today, as the world stands on the cusp of a new digital and economic frontier, West Virginia is stepping forward once again to lead, not by repeating the mistakes of other states, but by implementing a proactive, 20-year development strategy on our terms," Morrisey said in a statement obtained by Fox News.
The second listed "principle" in Morrisey’s plan says all West Virginians should benefit from data center projects approved through Charleston’s "High Impact Data Center Designation (HIDC)" process and the revenue they generate. The process was established under a separate 2025 state law.
Morrisey’s plan includes "direct tax relief for citizens," with none of the HIDC revenue entering the state general fund.
"By law, 50 percent of project revenue is dedicated directly to reducing and ultimately eliminating the State Personal Income Tax," reads the plan.
Counties would benefit also - with those hosting data centers receiving 30% of the revenue for schools and local government, and 10% of the revenue distributed to all 55 counties. Another 10% will fund infrastructure upgrades, which include public water systems in a state that's struggled since the decline of the coal industry.
"This shared framework gives us the exact blueprint we need to attract billions in private investment, create thousands of high-paying construction and technology jobs, lower taxes for our citizens, and revitalize economically distressed regions, all while preserving the wild and wonderful state we call home," said Morrisey.
The anti-data center movement, meanwhile, has become quite vocal in neighboring Virginia's Jefferson and Berkeley counties - as residents have taken note of sprawling data centers in Loudoun county.
"We are a cautionary tale for the rest of the country," Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) in recent remarks. "[I]f my district were a country, it would have more data centers than almost every other country in the world."
Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 19:40