The heirs to the portfolios advisors manage are learning to treat risk as entertainment.Deagreez/iStockPhoto / Getty Images
Wealth management firms and advisors have become remarkably comfortable talking about subjects once considered too private to touch, namely dementia, divorce and succession.
Yet, topics such as gambling, sports betting and the growing range of speculative products that have become mainstream forms of entertainment have remained largely absent from advisor-led conversations.
That’s an issue because the money involved reveals something about a client’s risk appetite, impulsiveness and financial stress that advisors would want to know about in almost any other context.
The scale is no longer marginal. In Ontario last year, bettors wagered $98.3-billion on regulated online websites, up 26 per cent from 2024. That’s the amount bet, not lost, but the size of the habit is the point.
It skews hard by gender and age: men are more than three times as likely as women to bet on sports, according to Statistics Canada, and the steepest growth sits with young men, who have been drawn in since single-game betting was legalized in 2021. These are the heirs to the portfolios you manage and they’re learning to treat risk as entertainment.
A suitability issue, not a moral one
Advisors already ask clients about insurance, estate wishes, tax, liquidity and debt. Yet, many never ask a simpler question: What financial risks exist outside clients’ investment portfolios? The moment betting becomes financially material, it stops being a matter of taste and becomes a matter of suitability.
A client wagering thousands of dollars a month, carrying gambling losses or quietly funding an adult child’s habit changes financial planning. Advice can only be suitable if advisors understand the behaviours shaping a household, not just the assets on the statement.
Just as every financial plan starts with a household’s financial balance sheet, every advisory relationship needs a behavioural balance sheet, too. That captures the behaviours and hidden obligations that rarely appear on account statements, but affect advice materially.
One spouse may be betting heavily while the other manages the accounts. An adult child may be borrowing quietly against a future inheritance. Parents may be covering a child’s losses without telling the siblings who will one day divide the estate and who may discover it years later.
These cases aren’t rare. They surface in family meetings constantly, held in place by the same shame that keeps the behaviour hidden. They’re wealth-management problems wearing the clothes of a gambling problem.
Understand the behaviour, don’t correct it
Unlike a mortgage or a registered retirement savings plan, gambling losses are usually hidden. Clients minimize them, spouses may not know about them, parents quietly step in, and shame keeps everyone silent.
Most people don’t describe themselves as having a gambling problem, either. They describe themselves as getting unlucky, chasing a loss or having a system. The advisor waiting for clients to divulge a problem will usually never hear about it.
Many advisors avoid the topic for the same reasons clients do. They don’t want to embarrass someone, damage trust or stray into territory that feels more personal than financial. That instinct is decent, but costly, and leading with judgment guarantees the conversation never happens.
The first job isn’t to correct the behaviour. It’s to understand it. Often, the appeal for clients isn’t the money. It’s having a view and testing it, holding a stake in an outcome they’re watching anyway. Those are understandable human instincts and the advisor’s job is to help channel them productively.
The client who loves having a view can be handed one more in line with their goals: a thematic position or a forecast built into their own plan.
Prediction markets are the clearest crossover because whatever else they are, they train people to think in probabilities. The client already pricing outcomes for entertainment purposes is primed to hear an advisor say the following when discussing a financial plan, “Let’s plan for a 30-per-cent chance this happens and decide what we’d do if it doesn’t.” Same instinct, better outcome.
The future of advice has never been defined by new products. It’s defined by advisors’ ability to understand what shapes a client’s financial life. Clients don’t need advisors who know every new betting platform. They need advisors they can trust. What looks like a gambling problem is often a suitability problem as well as a family dynamic and, ultimately, a trust issue.
Until those conversations become easier to have, the behavioural balance sheet will remain incomplete. So will the advice.
Kendra Thompson is founder and principal of Epok Advice, a Toronto-based consulting firm for the wealth management industry.