Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.
Gaming revenue in the United States rose by 7.2% to hit $18.96 billion in the third quarter of 2025, marking the best quarter of revenue since 2022, according to the American Gaming Association’s latest Gaming Industry Outlook.
The results reflect growing industry confidence after a year of uncertainty brought on by consumer spending concerns, said David Forman, vice president of research at the AGA.
“Casinos, gaming … whether it’s online or the brick-and-mortar property, have a lot to offer from an entertainment perspective,” Forman said. “And that’s reflected in consumers’ choices to visit the properties or visit the sites or use their apps.”
Per the report, 26% of respondents expect stronger business conditions over the next six to 12 months. That’s the most optimistic long-term view in three years, the association said in a news release.
Forman said casinos have navigated the uncertainty that defined the year’s first two quarters — from President Donald Trump’s initial tariff announcements to a slowdown in visitation. By September, total gaming revenue — including casino floors, sports betting and iGaming — was up nearly 8%.
Those numbers mirror what’s happening in Las Vegas.
Despite total visitation down 8.8% in 2025, gaming revenue remained strong, up 5.5% in Clark County in October compared with last year. Year-to-date gaming revenue is up 1.1% from the same period in 2024.
“So just from a holistic view of company and industry health, it paints a very positive picture in terms of where the industry is going,” Forman said.
Real economic activity in the industry increased year-over-year in the third quarter by just over 3%, which Forman said involves revenue, hotel bookings, employment and wages, and is the first such increase since the end of 2024, Forman said.
Industry executives also seem confident that customer activity is going to increase over the next six months to a year, he said.
“Consumers are using gaming products legally more than they’ve ever been able to before,” Forman said. “And I think they’re drawn to the compelling entertainment product that the industry offers.”
Brett Abarbanel, executive director of UNLV’s International Gaming Institute, said the last time there was heavily positive sentiment among gaming executives was toward the end of the pandemic, as people began returning to tourism and social spaces.
That statistic plateaued and evened out as a sense of normalcy came back, she said. Now, it’s on the rise again.
“A lot of these things do tend to be cyclical,” she said. “That’s the nature of economies. That’s the nature of what we have in our gaming world. And so I overall see this as a positive thing that gaming executives are … in aggregate, viewing a much more positive sentiment for this industry going forward, and certainly in the coming quarter.”
Concern about prediction markets
For the first time, state regulatory concerns are now a major issue for AGA member CEOs, Forman said, which he said was unsurprising given the proliferation nationwide of unregulated gaming. Half of the respondents in the outlook expressed concerns regarding state regulation.
He pointed to prediction markets as an example.
Prediction markets offer “sports event contracts” that Forman said he and others recognize to be sports bets, but because they are offered through the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), they are able to operate and to reach consumers in states where sports betting is illegal.
A lot of what is possible with technology now was not a consideration when gaming laws were written 30 years ago or even six months ago, Abarbanel said, because things develop so quickly.
So, she said, products like prediction markets are going public with different declarations of legality, which could exist in spaces not defined as gambling under certain laws.
These products could be potential threats or potential opportunities for the legalized gaming industry, Abarbanel said. Prediction markets, for example, are tied so closely to financial regulation at a federal level that it’s difficult for a state licensee to determine what to do with it.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board is acting against prediction markets, particularly in sports, Abarbanel said, and is one of a few states that have acted against the businesses offering prediction markets to varying success, she said.
“There’s state-level activity against potential federal regulation,” Abarbanel said. “At the moment, it’s against the entities, but it could theoretically come to a head, whether next year or the year after, maybe even the year after that. These things don’t always move quickly, where we’ll see a clash of state and federal governments. This has largely been a states’ rights issue.”
As new variables continue to enter the gaming ecosystem, collaboration and communication between all its stakeholders — including operators, suppliers, regulators and legislators — is more integral than ever, Abarbanel said.
“What are the major threats to the industry, but also what’s going well, and what are the things that we can focus on to continue to see this industry thrive, even as economic indicators and economic health are going through a bit of a roller coaster?” she said.