Case Study: How Digital Natives will Shape Online Gambling in 2025

Executive Summary

Digital natives are often defined as a generation that was born with access to the internet, and that audience–compromising young Millennials and Gen Z–represents a critical and growing segment for online gambling operators. With digital natives aging into the industry’s Goldilocks zone, stakeholders must increasingly understand how to acquire, engage, and retain this emerging customer.

This report peers into the consumption patterns, entertainment preferences, and behaviors shaping the next generation of players, and how these trends will shape the broader internet gambling segment in the years ahead.

WTF is a digital native?

First things first–let’s talk about the audience and how we define them.

We often chalk up the next generation of consumers to Gen Z (18-27). On one hand, it’s a fairly accurate representation of a large part of this emerging audience, but how Rivalry thinks about the next generation of consumers is a lot bigger than that.

Instead, we think of this audience as digital natives–a generation that grew up with not just access to the internet and technology, but are arguably shaped by it. They are chronically online, using technology for everything from watching content, keeping up with friends, and with the advent of Generative AI, a whole lot more too.

While this peer group is closer to 18-35, it isn’t a consumer necessarily defined by their age as much as one that’s defined by a handful of characteristics and traits, including, but not limited to:

• Chronically online, spending most of their time engaging with online content.
• Grew up playing video games, which is also their favorite form of entertainment.
• Technologically savvy with high expectations for consumer products and tech.
• Born on the internet–fluent in memes, irony, and online culture.
• More likely to be hanging out with their friends in a Discord voice chat than at the bar.
• Holds crypto assets, from Bitcoin and Ethereum down to Dogecoin and Pepe.

But as digital natives age into the betting industry’s core demographic, they’re bringing a unique set of consumption habits and entertainment preferences that are reshaping how they interact with technology, products, and media. Gen Z is a good benchmark for this audience as the first fully online generation, so we’ll reference plenty of data about them.

Here are the top three trends set to shape online betting in 2025.

1). Crypto betting brands will become the new household names amongst the next generation

Some of the fastest growing and most popular online betting brands amongst the next generation of consumers are not the big household names that many of us working in the industry grew up with. 

Crypto native operators, while relatively new entrants, are increasingly emerging as the most popular betting destination for this customer segment–and for good reason.

As a payment channel, crypto offers a product that is faster, global, and objectively better in almost every way—a compelling value proposition for online gambling customers, and even more so for the 35-and-under segment that makes up 57% of crypto users.

But crypto doesn’t just sound great on paper, it’s already making a major impact on the gambling business.

Not only has crypto eclipsed 25% of global betting handle, but data shows these users are nearly twice as valuable as fiat users on average.

On the product side, crypto operators commonly sport comprehensive loyalty mechanics, exclusive casino content, and site-wide gamification that help level up crypto platforms into its own CX bracket–one that notably meets this digitally native audiences’ high expectations for consumer tech.

In a report, gambling research firm Eilers & Krejcik pointed out that “younger Gen Z players are growing up in a gambling 3.0 world and the crossover between streaming sites, video games, mobile games and crypto gambling sites is increasingly common.”

“These sites are likely to be the introduction to online gambling as opposed to the regulated sector for some of this generation,” E&K added.

Not to mention, Gen Z leads in adopting new payment technologies like mobile wallets (also think: Venmo, CashApp). Making the leap to crypto-connected wallets is a natural progression for a generation that values speed, convenience, and digital-first solutions.

As Millennials and Gen Z continue driving this economic renaissance and searching out crypto compatibility in their products, we expect this trend will accelerate in the coming years.

2). Media and entertainment consumption shifts will continue driving changes across the online gambling marketing mix

It’s difficult to overstate the differences in media and entertainment consumption between digital natives and previous generations. At a glance, attention is shifting from linear to digital, affinity for sports is on the decline while gaming consumption has reached all time highs, and much more in between.

With this digital-first consumer continuing to make up a larger part of the online betting user base, the marketing mix has shifted to reach and resonate with an emerging audience entering the fold.

As the name suggests, digital natives are a chronically online breed. The average Gen Z consumer spends nearly 11 hours daily online, compared to Millennials, who spend 6.8 hours online on average. While Gen Z outpaces Millennials here, we can all agree that’s a lot of time spent online. 

This always-on persona means that gambling brands which can embed themselves into these daily online interactions–showing up on the right platforms and communities in the right ways–will find success in tapping into this group.

The shift to digital has also cannibalized viewing of other previously prominent advertising channels for gambling brands such as linear television. The 35-and-older crowd accounts for 84% of linear TV viewing, while those 18-34 represent less than 10% of the audience. Meanwhile, over 90% of Gen Z stream video content on platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, and Kick.

Traditional mass media channels are losing influence while creator, UGC, and digital strategies are on the rise.

As digital natives' preferred channels have evolved, so has their consumption and entertainment diet. This has curbed the impact traditionally popular categories like sports sponsorships have on this audience.

Sports betting incumbents are largely a sea of sameness, at least from a brand perspective. What you see are sports brands partnering with sports teams to create sports content that serves sports fans betting on sports. Get where we’re going with this?

The appetite for sports is waning amongst younger consumers as other forms of entertainment–like gaming–take precedent. Nearly 3 in 4 Gen Zers said a major reason they didn’t watch sports was because they weren’t interested in it.

That doesn’t necessarily mean sports are irrelevant, but we do suspect that gambling brands will find more resonance amongst the demographic by embedding themselves within online culture and adjacent communities versus sports culture.

3). Telegram and other non-traditional channels will become integral engagement vehicles 

As crypto gambling reaches an inflection point, new platforms and channels are coming into focus as brands look to connect with digital currency users.

Research shows that the key channels amongst crypto users–which overlaps with digital natives largely–include X (Twitter), Telegram, and Youtube, which combined reach 84% of this community, followed by Discord and Reddit.

Telegram is one that sticks out, however. This app has nearly one billion monthly active users, and nearly half of them are between 18-34.

Telegram has become synonymous with crypto in a lot of ways. From its native currency TON (The Open Network) to trading bots that will let you buy almost anything, most crypto projects today have a Telegram strategy.

Robby Yung, the CEO of crypto investment firm Animoca Brands, told Decrypt that “anybody with a Web3 app will have a Telegram strategy for user onboarding because it represents a distribution, advertising, and marketing vector.” 

“It represents the top of the funnel for user acquisition,” he said. “Everybody from DeFi through to gaming, regardless of where their core experience lies, will have a Telegram complement.”

Indeed, Telegram’s influence has already reached the gambling sector. Now, customers can login, deposit crypto natively in Telegram through in-app casinos.

Telegram experiences like this offer a frictionless experience for the player and an effective onboarding tool for operators–many rewarding users that refer friends, engage with social media properties, and register on the main site, creating a powerful engagement loop. 

It’s the latest example of how savvy brands are tapping different platforms, technologies, and channels to optimize product-market fit and reach digital-first audiences entering into the fold.

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