Posted on: May 13, 2026, 08:46h.
Last updated on: May 13, 2026, 08:46h.
- Commercial gaming revenue hit a record high of $78.61 billion in 2025
- 2025 marked the fifth consecutive year of record commercial gaming revenue
- The commercial industry continues to expand despite prediction markets and sweepstakes casinos
The commercial gaming industry managed to reach a new all-time revenue high in 2025. The feat comes in the face of new headwinds, primarily prediction markets venturing into sports trading and online sweepstakes casinos.
On Tuesday, the American Gaming Association published its 2026 State of the States report. The US commercial gaming industry generated record gross gaming revenue (GGR) of $78.61 billion, a 9.1% gain on 2024, or a difference of more than $6.5 billion.
Of the 38 jurisdictions in the US that have commercial casinos or sports betting, all but one reported an increase in revenue. Missouri was the outlier, with flat year-over-year GGR. Thirty-four states and Washington, DC, set annual revenue records.
This success generated $17.9 billion in gaming tax revenue for state and local governments, funding education, infrastructure, and other essential community services,” said Bill Miller, president and CEO of the AGA.
The commercial revenue includes casinos, sports betting, and iGaming. The GGR tally excludes tribal gaming, lottery revenue, fantasy sports, charitable gaming, skill games, prediction markets, unregulated gambling, and any other form of gaming.
In-person casino revenue reached a new high of $51.7 billion, up 2.3%. Sports betting posted a new record, too, with oddsmakers keeping $16.9 billion of bettors’ bets. iGaming GGR hit a new high of $10 billion, with Michigan, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania driving the online market.
2025 marked the commercial gaming industry’s fifth consecutive year of setting a new revenue record. Last year’s run came despite the emergence of prediction markets and sweepstakes casinos, online platforms that the AGA and its interests claim threaten the legal, highly regulated gambling market.
Commercial Gaming Maintains Pace Despite Threats
Prediction markets, federally regulated trading exchanges that allow users aged 18 and up to buy and sell shares of future events, last year ventured into sports. Critics say such activity constitutes sports betting, but the Commodity Futures Trading Commission maintains that it has the authority — not states — to determine what prediction markets can trade.
The CFTC says the sports markets “help the public forecast, plan for, hedge, and even harness perceptions of future events.” The AGA counters that the trades wrongly supersede state gaming laws and pose serious problem gambling and consumer safeguard concerns. Prediction markets also don’t provide a state tax benefit, the AGA argues.
The AGA states that it “mobilized” the commercial gaming industry and its regulators to “address the growing threat of prediction markets offering sports betting outside of established state and tribal gaming law.”
This fight goes to the heart of the American gaming framework: consumer protections, responsible gaming standards, and the fair distribution of tax revenue depend on a clear, state-regulated system,” said Miller.
In addition to prediction markets, unregulated online sweepstakes casinos continue to pose a risk to the regulated industry. Sweepstakes casinos claim to be free-to-play social gaming websites and apps, but their use of a dual-currency arrangement, where players can purchase promotional sweeps coins to play games for credits that can be withdrawn for cash, has faced backlash from the AGA.
“We confronted the illegal gaming market on multiple fronts. Working alongside state and tribal regulators, attorneys general, and law enforcement, we successfully stopped the advance of sweepstakes casinos and saw them pushed out of many key markets,” Miller said.
Gambling Losses Mount
Miller said once 2025 revenue numbers for the tribal gaming market are released in the coming weeks, revenue from regulated commercial and tribal revenue will presumably reach a new record.
Miller estimates total gaming revenue last year was likely around $125 billion.
