Illegal U.S. gambling is growing twice as fast as the regulated market, says 2025 GCI report

A 2025 Gambling Compliance International (GCI) report says unregulated platforms generated $97.4 billion in the U.S., or 77% of the sector. For PSPs, acquirers, and banks, the useful part is not the headline number but the split: legal and illegal online gambling are not converging, and regulated growth is not crowding out the offshore side.

1. According to the GCI study commissioned by the Campaign for Fairer Gambling and published by Casino.org on 11 August 2026, total online gross gaming revenue (GGR) in 2025 reached $125.6 billion, up almost 40% year on year.
2. Unregulated operators accounted for $97.4 billion of that total, equal to 77% of global volume. Their growth rate was 45% versus 2024, when the sector generated $67.1 billion.
3. The regulated market grew too, but at a slower pace: 23%, from $23 billion in 2024 to $28.3 billion in 2025. The report frames that gap as its main finding — illegal gambling is expanding at nearly twice the speed of regulated gambling.
4. The legal figures cover online sports betting, iGaming, sports prediction markets, and online lottery. The study excludes fantasy sports, sweepstakes casinos, social games, and land-based gambling, so this is an online-only comparison rather than a full-picture consumer gambling estimate.
5. GCI also found a relationship between regulated availability and per-capita spend. Michigan leads among regulated states, with residents allocating 1.72% of income to online betting. West Virginia (1.57%), New Jersey (1.56%), and Pennsylvania (1.34%) also rank high, all with regulated markets. On the other end, states without regulated online gambling or sports betting show the lowest figures: Washington (0.26%), South Carolina (0.32%), and Minnesota (0.32%). Texas, with no regulation, sits at 0.56%.

Derek Webb, inventor of Three Card Poker and the person behind the Campaign for Fairer Gambling, argues that legal expansion does not contain illegal growth; it only increases total betting volume unless the illegal side is actively monitored, policed, and enforced against. That is the argument PSPs keep hearing from one side of the market, and this report is a neat reminder that the data does not automatically cooperate.