Betting on Your Favorite Team: What Fans and Studies Say

For many fans, the team they love is the first team they want to bet on, and the one they are least able to judge calmly. In a survey of 191 fans of the Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings, respondents were far more likely to say they would bet on games involving their own team, and that held regardless of how much they knew about it. In two experiments, fans who bet on the home team and lost reported lower positive emotions than fans who did not bet. This article looks at what published research says about betting on a favorite team: why the pull is so strong, what it does to the experience of watching, how some fans try to protect themselves from heartbreak and where the risks show up. It uses one clearly labeled hypothetical scenario, relies on survey, experimental and interview studies, and offers no picks, because it is about the experience and not about winning.

Where Loyalty Meets Money

Sports betting has become part of how many people follow sport. After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal law that had restricted sports betting in May 2018, individual states were able to legalize it, and gambling content now appears alongside game broadcasts. In a survey of 400 U.S. sports consumers, 307 identified as sports bettors, and those bettors reported heightened satisfaction with their game-viewing experience. For many fans, a bet is a way of making a game matter more. The authors, Cindy Lee, Brent Oja and Hyejin Bang, note that excessive gambling can still have harmful effects, so the satisfaction finding is not a blanket endorsement.

Qualitative work points in the same direction. In a 2025 study for the UK Gambling Commission of teenage boys and young men aged 14 to 25, participants aged 18 and over described sports betting as the clearest overlap between gambling and social life. It builds on an existing interest in sport and gives friends something to talk about, such as what each person has put on for the weekend’s games. A team a person already loves is a ready-made reason to bet. Why gambling pulls people in more generally is covered in why people gamble and what motive research says.

Betting on Your Own Team: What Fans Report

Fans bet on the team they love

A 2023 clinical psychology dissertation by Drake Deitch surveyed 191 fans of three NFL teams: 80 Bears fans, 57 Packers fans and 54 Vikings fans. Participants rated how much they knew and liked their team and then answered questions about hypothetical bets. All three groups of fans were more likely to bet on games in which their own team was playing and least likely to bet on games in which it was not. Fans were far more likely to bet on their team regardless of the knowledge they held. Emotional attachment was a strong indicator of how participants chose to allocate their bets. The study is a dissertation and not a peer-reviewed paper, and it used hypothetical bets, so it shows a tendency among the fans surveyed and not a measured betting record.

A hypothetical Sunday

Imagine a hypothetical fan, call him Fan A, who has followed the same team since childhood and places a small bet on its game each week. In this scenario the bet is partly a way to feel closer to the game: he watches every possession and the evening has a clear emotional shape. When the team falls behind in the third quarter, the bet gives him one more thing to hope for. The wager turns a result he cares about into a result he can lose. Nothing here describes a real person, and every detail is an example. The scenario illustrates the kind of attachment the survey and interview studies describe.

The flow of the game, and betting against your own team

A study led by Professor Ross Gordon at Queensland University of Technology interviewed 50 Australians aged 18 to 35 who had used a sports betting app in the previous six months, and also measured brain activity and eye movements while they bet and watched sport. When a bet was placed, the researchers reported a release of emotional intensity, with increased memory function and engagement. Some participants entered what the team called a flow state, which Gordon said creates the potential for loss of control and riskier betting. Gordon also described betting while one’s own team is playing as a potent nexus of passionate emotions, and reported that it can lead to hedge betting, where people gamble against their own team to cushion the disappointment of a loss. Some fans bet against the team they love so that a loss comes with a payout. The sample was small and recruited from bettors, so it describes how these participants experienced betting, not every fan.

Friends, group chats and peer pressure

Betting on a favorite team is often a social act. In interviews with 50 Australian young men who gambled on sport, Emily Deans and colleagues found that participants saw wagering as a normal add-on to sport and that it was becoming embedded in peer rituals and online forums. In a grounded theory study of 33 Australians aged 18 to 29 who bet regularly, Nerilee Hing and colleagues found that interviewees bet more when watching matches with friends, citing peer pressure, group excitement, tips from friends, social bonding, friendly rivalry and bravado. The group can raise the stakes as much as the fandom does. The social side of picking winners with friends and coworkers also appears in why people join March Madness bracket pools.

What’s Really Going On: Emotion Over Knowledge

Researchers describe several overlapping reasons why a favorite team is hard to bet on with a cool head. Fans know their team’s story, history and players in detail, and that familiarity can feel like an edge. In the Gordon study, some participants described the intense focus of following a bet on a team they were already watching. Feeling informed and being right are not the same thing, and the dissertation’s finding that fans bet on their team regardless of knowledge suggests that attachment, not information, drives the choice for many people. The oddsmakers’ lines are set with money and probabilities in mind, so loyalty does not change what a team’s chances are.

A bet also changes what a loss means. In two experiments published in the Journal of Business Research, Ashley Stadler Blank, Katherine Loveland and David Houghton found that consumers who bet on the home team and lost reported lower positive emotions and subsequent fan engagement than consumers who did not bet. The effect held for a standard moneyline bet in the first study and for a prop bet, which can win even when the team loses, in the second. A lost bet can sour the evening even when the fan’s loyalty is unchanged. How the thrill of a live bet works in the moment is explored in what live betting feels like for everyday bettors.

The Other Side: When the Bet Takes Over the Game

The same studies that describe a livelier viewing experience also describe costs. In the Blank experiments, betting on the home team and winning did not increase fan engagement, while betting and losing reduced it, so the average fan experience in those experiments did not improve. Betting more than planned is another risk. In the Hing study, young adults described how smartphone betting made impulsive and spontaneous bets, riskier bets with longer odds and chasing losses more likely, and some also acted on encouragement from friends to bet. The pull to win back a loss is covered in why chasing losses is so hard to resist.

The UK Gambling Commission’s study also noted a warning sign: a few participants described shifting from group-based gambling to gambling alone, often tied to losing streaks or a decline in enjoyment. The researchers described this as an early warning that gambling might be becoming more problematic, with the emotional tone moving from connection toward chasing outcomes. When the shared game becomes a private bet, the purpose of the bet has changed. If gambling is causing harm, the National Problem Gambling Helpline, 1-800-MY-RESET, offers call, text and chat support 24/7. It is not an emergency line; in a crisis, call 911 or 988.

Common Misreadings About Betting on Your Team

The first misreading is that knowing a team well means knowing how it will do. In the dissertation survey, fans were more likely to bet on their own team regardless of knowledge, which suggests that familiarity and emotion can move the choice without improving it. Loving a team is not the same as predicting it.

The second is that a winning bet always makes the experience better. The Blank experiments found no extra fan engagement when fans bet on the home team and won, but a drop in positive emotion when they lost. In those experiments, the downside of a bet showed up more clearly than the upside.

The third is that betting against your own team is a clever safeguard. Hedge betting was described by the Gordon research team as a way to offset the disappointment of a loss, and it can feel like protection. It still involves staking money on an outcome you do not want. A hedge can soften a loss for the fan while it still costs the bettor money.

Where to Read Next

If a favorite team’s game feels different once there is money on it, the memory of a nearly successful bet often lingers longer than the result. For that experience, see why bettors remember the parlay that almost hit. For the other end of the story, read why people eventually decide to stop gambling. Together they show how a fan’s bet can start in fun and end in a decision about whether to keep going.

Sources & References

• Journal of Business Research — Game changing innovation or bad beat? How sports betting can reduce fan engagement (Blank, Loveland and Houghton)
• National Louis University — Effect of Fandom on Sports Gambling (Deitch)
• International Journal of Sport Management — Beyond the Game: Exploring the Enhanced Viewing Experience through Sports Betting (Lee, Oja and Bang)
• Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation — In it to win it
• UK Gambling Commission — Lived experiences of gambling in teenage boys and young men: Gambling embedded in social life is more likely to persist
• Addiction Research & Theory — The role of peer influences on the normalisation of sports wagering: a qualitative study of Australian men (Deans et al.)
• International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction — Immediate access … everywhere you go: a grounded theory study of how smartphone betting can facilitate harmful sports betting behaviours amongst young adults (Hing et al.)
• National Council on Problem Gambling — About the National Problem Gambling Helpline