US unlicensed online gambling market reaches estimated $97.4bn in 2025, analysis says

The Campaign for Fairer Gambling says unlicensed online gambling generated about $97.4 billion in gross gaming revenue in the US in 2025, according to an analysis by Gaming Compliance International. For PSPs, acquirers, and banks, the useful part is not the headline number alone: the unlicensed side of the market is still larger than the regulated one, which tells you where a lot of payment volume is still trying to live.

1. Gaming Compliance International, in an analysis commissioned by the Campaign for Fairer Gambling, estimates that unlicensed online gambling in the US produced approximately $97.4 billion in gross gaming revenue in 2025. That was up 45.2% from the previous year and, on the report’s numbers, grew much faster than the regulated market.
2. The same analysis puts regulated online gambling revenue at $28.3 billion in 2025, up approximately 23%. In other words, the licensed market kept growing, but the unlicensed one grew at nearly twice the pace.
3. Unlicensed websites and apps are estimated to have accounted for about 77% of total US online gambling gross gaming revenue in 2025, compared with 74% in 2024. That is the key number for payment providers: the regulated channel is expanding, but it is still not the main channel by volume in this analysis.
4. The report treats these figures as estimates rather than official government statistics, so they are an assessment of market activity rather than a transaction-by-transaction accounting of US gambling. Even so, the direction of travel is clear enough for operators and their payment partners: regulated growth is not automatically pulling traffic out of unlicensed channels.
5. The analysis also estimates that total US online gambling losses rose from approximately $90.1 billion in 2024 to $125.6 billion in 2025, a gain of about 39.4%. The report says consumer choice between licensed and unlicensed channels can be influenced by product availability, geographic restrictions, promotional offers, payment options and consumer awareness.

The legal split matters because licensed operators work under state-specific rules covering age verification, responsible gambling, advertising, taxation, financial controls and consumer protection. Operators outside those frameworks do not face the same requirements, which is exactly why payment routing, merchant risk appetite, and enforcement pressure stay central to the US market.