The online gambling marketplace of the US is continuing to grow, and many brands, both established and new, are seeing strong growth in new states. This expansion has a momentum all of its own and shows little sign of stopping.
Over the last year, the cheers of fans that put their money where their loyalty is and were rewarded, as well as the groans of those whose faith in their teams went unrewarded, have increased as a number of gambling operators have gained access to new markets in the US, thanks to states awarding them increased licenses. The most recent state to activate a new online gambling market is Missouri, having done so on the 1st of December this year, just over a year after passing the vote to do so on the 2nd of November 2024. While the situation with online casino gaming is slightly more complicated and the chiming of digital slot machines is confined to only a few states, the number of states that allow residents to cheer on their favorite teams from their couch while placing bets online continues to grow, with Missouri being the 39th state to do so (40th if we include Washington, D.C.).
Industry veterans and interested parties are sure to recognize many of the names that are now offering sports betting services in the Ozark state; FanDuel, DraftKings and BetMGM, to name just a few of the usual suspects. The prevailing story across the US is that operators who are currently working somewhere in the US market are much better poised to capitalize on the opening of new markets as more states regulate and legalize online betting activities. This is broadly true of the online casino market in the US as well, with many of the newest online casinos in the USA being run by operators that already have a stake in some part of the currently open US market, be that in other states or in other mediums, such as running a sportsbook.
Online Sports Betting Grows in Acceptance Across The US
We’re sure most of you know the score by now: The Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that states were free to legalize and regulate online gambling and sports betting within their borders, and since then, the US online gambling market has grown in fits and starts. This ruling was an overturning of what was the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA). For online sportsbooks and betting activities, there has been a much wider acceptance and much faster and stronger growth.
INSERT YOUTUBE LINK HERE: What Is PASPA? US Legal Sports Betting Explained
How Much Exactly is Online Sports Betting Worth in the US?
When looking at the figures for sports betting’s Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR) from 2018, which sat at around $400 million, to what was $13.78 billion in 2024, anyone can see which number is bigger. The absolutely explosive growth of sports betting in the US is not stopping either, with the 2024 figure being a 24.8% increase to the $11 billion in GGR that was generated in 2023. Some of the biggest brands in sports betting have been well-positioned to take advantage of this extended US sports-betting boom, with Flutter, the world’s largest online betting company according to Reuters, expecting to see a 34% jump in profits, which it is happy to attribute largely to the success of its market-leading brand in the US, Fanduel. Fanduel is currently in possession of around 44% of the market share of online sports betting in the US, with the next leading competitor, DraftKings, nipping at their heels holding about 34%.
Online Casino Expansion Slows, Despite Strong Revenue Gains
With 39 states in the US, as well as Washington, D.C., allowing operators to expand and stretch their offerings into increasingly open markets, it should be no surprise that the sports betting market is such a healthy one, albeit one that shows plenty of room for growth. For online casino operators, the path is less clear and open. As CBS Sports writes, there are still currently “only seven states (which) have legalized real-money online casinos as of December 2025”. Despite these limitations, the market size for the online casino industry in the US in 2024 has been estimated by Grand View Research as being somewhere in the area of $6.78 billion USD, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.7% from 2025 to 2030, without factoring in potential legalization and regulation being passed by new states.
To add to this, almost all states, with the exclusion of Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah, offer state-sanctioned lottery services. This bears mentioning as it shows that while some states may resist sports betting or online casino gaming, the approximate $103 billion that US residents spent on lottery tickets in 2023 alone, according to The Motley Fool, speaks to a wider acceptance of gambling-related activities.
Only One State Makes Big Changes in 2025
By far the biggest change in a state for online sports betting in 2025 has been in Missouri, which, as we covered earlier, became the 39th state to offer regulated online sports betting to residents. The spread into Missouri of big brand names such as FanDuel and DraftKings should be a clear indication that operators that have already established reputations for successful running of online gambling operations are the best poised to descend like a starved man at Thanksgiving and carve up the new territory like so much freshly cooked turkey, and to seize the opportunity of new territory opening up. This expansion should see Missouri gain a significant amount of tax revenue from online sports betting, with CBS Sports reporting that the combined tax revenue predicted by FanDuel and DraftKings alone will reach approximately $57.5 million. As Missouri faces growing economic uncertainties, this new source of tax revenue will be of significant use to the state.
Other states saw some regulatory movements towards sports betting, but none were successful. In Delaware, the advanced sports betting bill HB 365 would have increased the online sports betting market in the state, but as of the writing of this article, only BetRivers is regulated to act as an online sportsbook in the state. Nebraska saw the introduction of LB13, which was set to expand sports betting in the state to include online options, but the issue received little traction and was not passed.
Brands That Made Big Moves in 2025
We discussed earlier, with the expansion into Missouri, that the usual suspects are the ones that seem to be making the biggest moves, and that bears true across the entirety of the US online gambling market. Operators and brands that already possess a significant portion of the market, such as FanDuel or bet365, seem much more ready to take chances and seize the opportunities offered by new territory. That being said, some bear mentioning specifically.
Fanatics Expands Aggressively
One of the key methods by which many of the online gambling operators in the US, and elsewhere in the world, try to expand is through the offering of innovative new services that attract customers. Fanatics, a brand that incorporates merchandise, events and gambling, has attempted to do just this by launching two new services, Fanatics Casino and Fanatics Markets.
The Fanatics Casino is a standalone casino app, designed from the ground up to be mobile-friendly, which was launched in May of this year across 4 states, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The move into these states’ online casino markets is a signal that Fanatics, as a brand, is moving beyond simply covering sports and will be looking to make further inroads into allowing its customers to enjoy the visceral thrills of digitally spinning the reels of slot games, entering the broader gambling marketplace.
According to Fanatics, Fanatics Markets is an “intuitive way to engage with the moments that move sports and culture, and to pick a side”, as said by Matt King, Chief Executive Officer of Fanatics Betting and Gaming. In a nutshell, Fanatics Markets is a ‘prediction market’, meaning that people can make predictions and put money on the chances of certain events happening. Essentially, it is a betting outlet, but one that is not limited only to sports events.
Fanatics was able to launch this service after acquiring Paragon Global Markets, LLC and forming a partnership with Crypto.com, which was the first platform to launch sports prediction markets, according to the Global Head of Predictions at Crypto.com, Travis McGhee.
bet365 Makes Strategic Moves
bet365, which is, according to BritishRacecourses, the most popular betting site in the world in terms of traffic, has set its hand to make a concerted push into the still-young US online gambling marketplace. While bet365 is undeniably a titanic figure in the global gambling market, readwrite reports that the operator is underperforming in the US when compared to other operators there, with DraftKings making almost as much revenue in the US alone as bet365 did worldwide. While some fear that bet365 may abandon its already established market dominance in the UK, the operator is publicly making slow inroads across the various US gambling markets.
By a slow process of sponsorship and partnership deals with local sports clubs, such as the St. Louis Cardinals in Missouri, and with the slow launching of platforms in more states over time, bet365 is taking a slower and more strategic approach to growth in the US online gambling market.
BetMGM Sees Steady Growth Along Partnership Lines
Another of the big players in the US market, BetMGM, is overall the third-largest sportsbook in the US, and was also present to capitalize on the newly opened Missouri online market. Before the move into Missouri, BetMGM last saw expansion of its online sportsbook services in 2024 into North Carolina (March) and Washington, D.C. (July), allowing sports fans in those states to enjoy the pulse-pounding thrill of putting their money where their team loyalty is. It has also created one of the largest liquidity networks for online poker in the US, combining the player pools of its Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Michigan BetMGM Poker services.
BetMGM, as a joint venture between Entain plc and MGM Resorts International, is a brand that has been relying heavily on its ability to form partnerships and use them to boost its reach and growth. In Missouri, this has been done in partnership with Century Casinos Inc. and with the Kansas City Chiefs. More broadly, BetMGM has a partnership deal with X (formerly Twitter), which places it as its exclusive live odds sports betting partner, offering information directly on X about odds, and having links directly from X to its services. Bet MGM also collaborates directly with the NFL, having direct sponsorships and partnerships with several teams, such as the aforementioned Kansas City Chiefs, the Philadelphia Eagles, Detroit Lions and many others. They are also the exclusive providers of odds for any coverage of the NFL on NBC Sports.
It’s clear that the strategy for expansion for BetMGM is predicated along the lines of partnerships and sponsorships to draw more eyes to the brand, and as the third-largest operator across the US, that tactic has been paying dividends.
Big Players Increase Their Market Share As the US Market Continues to Show Signs of Growth
As the big players in the US gambling ecosystem continue to spread their influence like wildfire across different state markets, it is clear that while the various US gambling markets are providing significant capital returns, those markets are far from the point of being like a crowded train carriage with no possibility of stretching, leaving operators still more room to expand. With many states, like Alabama, Nebraska and Oklahoma, among others, seemingly poised with a single successful legislative session away from their own newly opened sports betting markets, the big gambling brands in the US have plenty of room to grow.
The expansion of the online gambling market in the US shows no signs of slowing down, and as the big brands continue to ink sponsorships and partnership deals, their influence is likely to continue growing, regardless of new markets opening up for them or not.
Leave a Reply