As Americans focus their attention on Super Bowl betting this year, they’re expected to wager a record amount of money on Sunday’s game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles. The American Gaming Association expects people to spend approximately $16 billion betting on the game, more than double the estimate for last year’s matchup between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals. The association also estimates that a record 50.4 million American adults will bet on the Super Bowl, a 61% increase from last year, fueled by the expansion of legal sports betting.
With that mind-boggling amount of money likely to be wagered on the Super Bowl, Rishi Khanna, CEO of Stocktwits, a social platform for investors and traders, told MarketWatch that there are plenty of comparisons between sports betting and meme stocks. Related: At the Super Bowl, fans will be able to legally bet on the game on their phones — a first “I think there’s a huge overlap among the audiences,” Khanna said. “Think about it. A trader and a sports bettor — it’s a game of risk and odds, it’s a game of numbers, it’s a game of math.” Even as sports betting is on the rise, recent years have also seen the emergence of so-called meme stocks such as AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc.
AMC,
-8.58%,
GameStop Corp.
GME,
-2.03%
and Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.
BBBY,
-9.62%
that have been fueled by a social-media-driven trad …