February 13, 2026

On Super Bowl Sunday, Minors Scaled the Walls of Gaming & Prediction Markets — and Failed

For online gaming and prediction market operators, the Super Bowl becomes a high-velocity stress test for identity and fraud systems.

As a partner to nearly every major platform in the space, Socure’s teams spent the day of the big game monitoring massive surges in real-time traffic.

Traffic to gaming sites began surging long before kickoff, with new application volumes climbing across all platforms more than three days ahead of the event. The most significant spike occurred between Saturday and Super Bowl Sunday, when new account applications soared by 300% — representing a 4X jump in traffic.

Super Bowl Boom: 300% Increase in New Accounts in 24 hours

Total Volume of New Online Gaming Account Attempts

It was exciting to see healthy growth in real time. But some of that volume during Super Bowl 60 revealed an unwelcome trend: minors committing “age laundering” at scale.

The good news? They were unsuccessful.

Gaming and Prediction Markets Stand Ready for ‘Age Laundering’

While legislators furiously debate age-gating laws for social media and AI, the gaming industry operates under long-standing regulations. They have a hard line at 18, 19, or 21, depending on the state.

As a result, online gaming platforms have spent years fortifying their defenses. While they began with systems to ensure they were compliant with Know Your Customer regulations, over the years, they’ve innovated with sophisticated systems that leverage more data, digital footprint, better analytics, and the ability to assess for deepfakes and spoofed IDs. This is how they gain the nuance necessary to detect complex fraudsters, money launderers, or crafty minors.

But that doesn’t stop the relentless pursuit from underage users.

Kids are digitally savvy; they know modern systems check broader signals like phone tenure and email history, which is precisely why gaming companies must relentlessly evolve their defenses.

Often, their weapon of choice is age laundering — “washing” their true age to meet eligibility requirements by altering their date of birth (DOB) during signup. Sometimes, they’ll even try more sophisticated attempts, blending real, verified identity elements from an older friend or family member with the minor’s own name.

Our data from Super Bowl 60 underscores a trend of persistent, calculated misrepresentation by minors. We tracked a 244% surge in applications where the provided DOB failed to align with our broader identity records and digital footprint analysis. While the average rate of DOB discrepancies sat at 12% leading up to the game, and more than doubled to 26% by the post-game trophy ceremony.

Age Laundering: 244% Increase in Manipulating Birth Dates

The Volume of Manipulated DOB Soars Leading into Game Day

Where Minors Hit a Wall

Socure is all about the nuance – the layers of an identity that can be assessed in real-time, even as it pertains to age. Behind every age verification check is a foundational Know Your Customer (KYC) process that is enriched by a sophisticated verification process.

We go beyond simply verifying that PII exists; we corroborate it across an expansive ecosystem of data sources, digital footprints, and device histories. By leveraging a multidimensional identity graph, we evaluate identity persistence and behavioral consistency in real-time.

Discrepancies become clear when these pieces fail to align — whether it’s a phone number mismatched to a name, an implausible address history, or a DOB that conflicts with established records. These red flags are often compounded by technical maneuvers, such as proxy networks or uncorrelated IP addresses, which signal a deliberate attempt to deceive.

And this is where minors are caught in the new account application flow.

This granular approach is particularly effective at untangling guardian/minor overlaps. We can distinguish between legitimate household sharing and active manipulation by detecting which elements resolve to a minor versus a guardian. By verifying the broader digital profile — including carrier tenure, email maturity, and device ownership — we create a high-fidelity filter. This not only catches sophisticated “age launderers” but also minimizes false declines, ensuring trusted adults aren’t caught in the crossfire.

But They Keep Trying

Yet, this doesn’t stop some minors from their pursuit.

When Socure flags inconsistencies, many of our partners automatically guide applicants to a government ID check – a process that delivers highly accurate decisions in seconds.

But even at this stage, age manipulation persists. On game day, we saw a 300% spike in applicants whose submitted DOB at the point of ID check didn’t match the data extracted from their ID or corroborated by device-based indicators.

A 300% Increase in the Wrong Age at ID Verification

Volume of Age Manipulation at ID Verification

Newly Age Regulated Services Could Learn From Gaming

If you’ve been wondering why age-verification legislation is in the headlines almost daily, it’s for two reasons: lawmakers are escalating efforts to protect minors, and minors are increasingly adept at maneuvering controls.

Newly regulated industries can learn a lot from the multi-layered defenses gaming operators have built and continue to bolster.

The path forward lies in solutions that provide a layered, persistent view of identity, delivering high-accuracy decisions without user friction. This requires a flexible, risk-based approach to age verification within a single flow. In the gaming industry, platforms must be able to pivot easily from light-touch, passive verification to ID checks when risk is flagged. To be effective, however, this entire orchestration must happen with total automation and near-instant speed.

Age manipulation isn’t always obvious, so the right approach needs to be nuanced enough to spot the subtle inconsistencies across signals that can hide when minors leverage identity elements from their families and friends. At a minimum, you require:

• Multidimensional Verification: Validate user inputs against a diverse ecosystem of authoritative data sources and an evolving identity graph to ensure behavioral consistency. These systems must assess the correlation between specific identity elements and an individual, while also detecting when those same elements are being “recycled” or shared across multiple accounts.
• Device and Digital Intelligence: Evaluating device signals plus phone/ email history and broader digital footprint. Digital and device data make it nearly impossible to hide a real DOB.
• ID Verification with Added Signal: Deploy platforms that allow for an automated decision to leverage ID checks. Those ID checks must be lightning fast, and include the ability to simultaneously assess for deep fake credentials, as well as surrounding device and digital signals.

The Takeaway

Super Bowl Sunday revealed that minors will get increasingly sophisticated in how they try to obscure their age — scrambling background detection systems with altered birth dates, blended identity elements, and borrowed credentials.

It’s an arms race. And the only sustainable answer will always be gaining more nuance into every element of an identity in real-time.

Posted by

Rivka Gewirtz Little

Rivka Gewirtz Little is a financial crime and payments solution expert with nearly two decades of fintech market experience. Before re-joining Socure as the Chief of Staff to the CEO, she led Global Fraud Strategy in the treasury of Goldman Sachs. Prior, she served as the SVP of Marketing for Socure during the largest growth phase in company history. Earlier, Rivka was an industry analyst responsible for the Global Payment Strategies practice at IDC Financial Insights. There, she focused on the intersection of payments modernization, fraud and identity. Rivka's technology coverage has been cited in publications, including The New York Times, USA Today, CNET, Vox, The Verge and a number of technology trade journals.