YTD April 2025
Through the first four months of 2025, domestic gaming revenue increased by over $1.4bn year-over-year, or 5.9%. We highlight that the US domestic commercial casino market continues to grow YTD alongside meaningful growth across the sports betting, iGaming and VGT distributed gaming segments.
The overall gaming market and its segments continue trending up as a whole even though there are numerous markets that have experienced declines this year.
The segment with the most unevenly distributed growth is by far the commercial casino segment where 22 of 36 markets are above their YTD 2024 performance and have YoY growth at a pace greater than that of the declining markets. The growth in three of the 22 markets experiencing YoY growth is largely due to recent expansions and locations ramping up: these include Illinois, New Hampshire and Virginia casinos. The average decline of the 14 markets that are not growing is -1.4% YTD, and the market showing the highest decline is Laughlin Nevada at -2.8%.
Sports betting segment growth hit 10.5% year-over-year through YTD April with 26 of 33 markets experiencing YoY growth. The Mississippi sports betting market continues to experience significant revenue declines during the first four months of 2025, continuing a trend from 2024. This market reported lower write, or handle, YTD through April 2025 indicating that the declining revenues are not only the result of lower hold %. Additionally, Pennsylvania and Vermont sports betting revenues are down significantly despite increased handle, a trend worth continued monitoring.
The iGaming segment continues to ramp up with significant growth across all markets and a total segment growth of 28.5% year-over-year through YTD April. However, we note that the majority of these markets are located in northeastern coastal states making this segment reliant on regional economic trends.
VGT revenues were up YoY in April in total and across six of eight reporting markets. South Dakota is only 1% behind its YTD 2024 performance while Pennsylvania is 3.5% behind, although the state’s VGT market is normally quite small as a result of regulatory constraints. Total YTD VGT revenues have grown by 4.6% through April compared to 2.9% through March.