How Much Do Americans Lose Gambling? About $160 Billion a Year
Americans lose about $160 billion a year on legal gambling. In 2025, commercial casinos, sportsbooks and online casinos kept $78.6 billion of what players bet, and tribal casinos kept $46.2 billion. State lotteries keep roughly $35 billion more a year after paying out prizes. Spread across every adult in the US, that comes to about $590 a year.
Those are losses, not bets. Bigger numbers turn up in the news, like the record $166.9 billion Americans bet on sports in 2025, but they count every dollar that was bet, won back and bet again. Of that $166.9 billion, the sportsbooks kept $17 billion.
How much do Americans lose gambling each year?
About $160 billion, counting the three biggest kinds of legal gambling: commercial casinos and sportsbooks, tribal casinos, and state lotteries. Each figure below is what the operators kept, meaning the money players bet minus the winnings paid back to them. It comes from operator accounts reported to regulators, not from surveys.
| Where it was lost | Lost by players | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commercial casinos, in person | $50.9 billion | 2025 | AGA (opens in a new tab) |
| Sports betting | $17.0 billion | 2025 | AGA (opens in a new tab) |
| Online casinos | $10.7 billion | 2025 | AGA (opens in a new tab) |
| Tribal casinos | $46.2 billion | Fiscal 2025 | NIGC (opens in a new tab) |
| State lotteries, after prizes | $34.8 billion | Fiscal 2023 | Census Bureau (opens in a new tab) |
| Total | About $160 billion |
The industry’s name for these figures is gross gaming revenue: the bets an operator took in, minus the winnings it paid out. For players, that’s exactly what they lost.
Where each number comes from
The American Gaming Association (opens in a new tab) adds up state regulators’ reports for the first three rows, and its 2025 total of $78.6 billion was 9% above 2024’s $72.0 billion. The National Indian Gaming Commission reports tribal gaming for its own fiscal year. The lottery row is ticket sales minus prizes from the Census Bureau’s lottery table for fiscal 2023, the latest year in its published tables. The Census counts sales after retailers take their commissions, so what players lost on lottery tickets was somewhat higher.
Canada has no national figure like this. Our page on how much Canadians lose gambling works from Ontario’s monthly regulator file, the closest thing it has to one.
How much does the average American lose gambling?
About $590 a year, or roughly $49 a month. That’s the $160 billion divided by the 269.8 million US adults in the Census Bureau’s estimate (opens in a new tab) for July 1, 2025. Not every adult gambles, so the average for people who do is higher. Lottery losses alone come to about $129 per adult.
How much did Americans lose on sports betting in 2025?
About $17 billion. Americans bet a record $166.9 billion with legal sportsbooks in 2025, and the books kept $16.96 billion, or about 10 cents of every dollar bet. That was 22.8% more than they kept in 2024, according to the American Gaming Association (opens in a new tab).
The gap between the two numbers is the same money being bet more than once. Say you deposit $100 and bet $20 a game. Winning bets pay back into your account, and you bet that money again, so your $100 can turn into several hundred dollars of bets before it’s gone. All of those bets count toward the $166.9 billion. Only the $100 you lost counts toward the $17 billion.
Slot machines still take more than sports betting
Sports betting gets most of the attention, but players lose far more on slot machines. Slots at commercial casinos took $37.1 billion in 2025, according to the AGA’s revenue tracker (opens in a new tab), more than sports betting and online casinos combined ($27.7 billion).
Lottery tickets lose more per dollar than sports bets
State lotteries paid back about two-thirds of their ticket sales as prizes in fiscal 2023, so about a third of every ticket dollar stayed with the lottery. A sportsbook keeps about 10 cents. When we looked at which scratch-off has the best odds, Texas scratch-offs paid back 60 to 80 cents per dollar, depending on the price.
Which states lose the most to gambling?
Nevada, by a wide margin. Its casinos and sportsbooks kept $15.8 billion in 2025, about twice Pennsylvania’s $7.7 billion. These figures, from the AGA’s State of the States 2026 (opens in a new tab) report, cover commercial gambling only. Tribal casinos and lotteries aren’t included, and Nevada’s total includes what visitors from other states lose there.
| State | Lost by players in 2025 |
|---|---|
| Nevada | $15.8 billion |
| Pennsylvania | $7.7 billion |
| New Jersey | $7.0 billion |
| New York | $5.7 billion |
| Michigan | $5.0 billion |
| Ohio | $3.5 billion |
| Illinois | $3.4 billion |
| Louisiana | $3.1 billion |
Lottery spending ranks the states differently. By our math from the Census lottery table and its state population estimates (opens in a new tab), Massachusetts sold about $866 of lottery tickets per resident in fiscal 2023, the most of any state. It also paid back more than most, about 73 cents of each sales dollar in prizes.
What’s missing from the official totals?
Mostly gambling outside a licensed market. The biggest piece is illegal and unregulated gambling, such as offshore betting sites and unlicensed gaming machines. The AGA estimates (opens in a new tab) that Americans bet $673.6 billion a year with these operators, who keep $53.9 billion of it. That’s an industry group’s estimate, and the machines it counts include so-called skill games, whose legal status depends on the state.
Two newer kinds of betting aren’t counted either: sweepstakes casinos, which several states moved to ban in 2025, and sports contracts on prediction markets. No state licenses either one as gambling, so there’s no public count of what players lose on them. Office pools and poker nights aren’t in any total. So the real figure is higher than $160 billion, by an amount nobody can measure.
Does legal sports betting hurt household finances?
For some households, the research says yes. A UCLA and USC study (opens in a new tab) found that in states allowing online sports betting, the likelihood of a personal bankruptcy filing rose 25% to 30% in the years after legalization. Credit card and auto loan delinquencies rose about 8%.
A separate study (opens in a new tab) of household transaction data found that once online sports betting was legal, households saved less, because money that would have gone into investments went to bets instead. The effects were concentrated among households already short on cash, which ran up more credit card debt, had less credit available and overdrew their accounts more often.
What if a prize draw didn’t cost you anything?
Lodavo is our prize-linked savings app. You save money in your own bank account, and the more you save, the more free tickets you get for weekly cash prize draws. If you don’t win, you haven’t lost anything, because the money you saved is still yours. You get the fun of waiting on a draw, and nobody keeps a cut of your money.
Lodavo is live in Canada and coming to the US, state by state. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited.
Frequently asked questions
Can you deduct gambling losses on your taxes?
How much of the money goes to state governments?
Where can you get help if gambling is costing too much?
Prize-linked savings, coming to the US
Want Lodavo in your state?
With Lodavo, saving earns you free tickets for weekly cash prize draws, and your money stays in your own account. It’s already live in Canada.
You're on the list
We'll email you as soon as Lodavo is ready in your state. When it is, sign up with this email to get your 100 bonus tickets.
No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited.