Harvard’s endowment recently purchased shares of Flutter Entertainment plc, the parent company of FanDuel, according to a holdings report.
On Nov. 14, 2025, Harvard Management Co. Inc. filed a 13F-HR form disclosing ownership of 115,481 shares of Flutter valued at $29.3 million as of Sept. 30, 2025.
The stake represented approximately 1.4% of the 13F portfolio, putting it among the portfolio’s 20 largest investments. Harvard’s entire endowment is worth over $50 billion.
The date in the quarter on which HMC made the purchase is unclear. On Nov. 17, Flutter’s stock was down more than 20% over the prior month.
Harvard isn’t the only university with an endowment invested in the online gambling industry. But Harvard has in the past retreated from investments in especially harmful sectors.
HMC did not respond to a request for comment from GamblingHarm.org. Requests for comment from several addiction experts at Harvard did not produce responses.
Bad Timing for Harvard FanDuel Investment
The investment came as attitudes toward legal sports betting have deteriorated.
A Pew Research Center survey taken in summer 2025 and released in October found that 43% of U.S. adults believe state-sanctioned sports betting is a “bad thing for society,” up from 34% who held the same view in 2022.
Support for legal sports betting has dropped among the industry’s core customer base of young men. The survey found that 47% of men under 30 say legal sports betting is a bad thing for society, soaring from just 22% in 2022.
Also in October, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted several people in and around the NBA for allegedly corrupting games through a scheme related to prop bets. The government also indicted a pair of MLB players in November over similar allegations.
Sports betting addiction in the U.S. is on the rise. Half of online sports bettors are at risk of addiction or already in the throes of it, according to a Maryland study. Gambling addiction harms, on average, six people around the problem gambler, according to the World Health Organization.
Socially Responsible to Invest in FanDuel?
Mark Gottlieb, law professor at Northeastern University, director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI), and co-founder of Family and Friends of Gamblers (FFOG), issued a statement to GamblingHarm.org regarding Harvard’s FanDuel stake:
“Harvard’s endowment managers, through this investment in Flutter, are betting that Flutter’s business model, built on leveraging the addictive potential of its gambling products for profit, will benefit the university. If history holds true, when pressed on the notion that such an investment is socially irresponsible, those funds will be invested elsewhere.
Thirty-five years ago, Harvard divested from the tobacco industry. At that time, the Public Health Advocacy Institute had developed the Tobacco Divestment Project and, as the tobacco industry became denormalized, many individuals and institutions consciously divested from ‘Big Tobacco’ and its business model built on addiction and massive health harms.
Four years ago, Harvard divested from the fossil fuel industry as it, like tobacco, has been implicated in causing great harm to public health by contributing to climate change.
While the gambling industry is still in the early stages of denormalization, indications such as October’s Pew Research poll offer support for the notion that, ultimately, the gambling industry will be strongly disfavored by the public.
As a result, I would predict that Harvard’s stake in Flutter will be a temporary one.”
Heather Wardle, Professor of Gambling Research and Policy at the University of Glasgow, told GamblingHarm.org that HMC’s stake in Flutter “seems deeply unwise to me.”
Harvard’s Other Online Gambling Positions
Harvard’s FanDuel stake is alongside a large position in Light & Wonder, Inc., another online gambling firm. Light & Wonder is a B2B supplier of online gambling products.
According to the latest holdings report, HMC reported an 81% increase in ownership of Light & Wonder, Inc.
On Nov. 14, 2025, HMC filed a 13F-HR form disclosing ownership of 1,125,210 shares of Light & Wonder valued at $94.45 million as of Sept. 30, 2025. HMC filed a previous 13F-HR in 2025 disclosing 621,406 shares of Light & Wonder.
Light & Wonder, the Las Vegas-based technology company formerly known as Scientific Games, provides the digital slot machines, platforms, and data tools that power some online gambling sites. Harvard had a position in Scientific Games in 2020.
Harvard’s endowment also holds a large stake in Meta Platforms, Inc. Meta allegedly projected that roughly 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, including illegal online casinos, according to internal documents obtained by Reuters. Meta disputed the reporting.
Harvard Not Alone
Harvard isn’t the only university with a publicly disclosed stake in an online gambling company.
Other academic institutions with current or past stakes include the University of Hawaii (DraftKings), University of Waterloo (Flutter, DraftKings), Mount Allison University (Flutter, DraftKings), and the University of Sydney (Aristocrat, Entain).
These examples are not exhaustive, and holdings change quarter to quarter. Academic institutions investing in the online gambling industry is a systemic problem — a feature, not a bug, of state-sanctioned online gambling.
Many private universities do not publish position-level details. There are other channels for an academic institution to have exposure to the growing online gambling industry.
Regulated online gambling can provide some consumer protection, but those tools often fall far short of protecting players. The regulation of online gambling normalizes the industry and allows universities to hold financial positions in companies that can cause severe financial harm to the public.
Over 20 U.S. states regulate FanDuel, providing Harvard and others the ethical cover to invest in a harm-based business. Multiple studies have shown that online gambling companies generate most of their revenue from a very small group of users.
