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Home » Who is betting the most in the world?

Who is betting the most in the world?

Americans lost $158bn on regulated gambling in 2025, five times Macau. We rank 30 jurisdictions and size prediction markets, crypto and unlicensed play.

Bartosz Hrydziuszko by Bartosz Hrydziuszko
November 6, 2026
in Market Data
Reading Time: 17 mins read
Largest gambling markets: $418bn regulated GGR, US $158bn, Italy $25bn, Brazil $6.6bn, graphic

Image: The iGaming Europe

Players in the United States lost about $158bn on regulated gambling in 2025, more than the next six largest gambling markets combined, according to an analysis of regulator and company data from 30 jurisdictions by The iGaming Europe. Together, the 30 account for about $418bn in gross gaming revenue (GGR).

The US alone takes 38% of that total. Online accounts for about $74bn, or 18%, in the 17 markets that split GGR by channel. Unlicensed operators, meaning those without a licence in the player’s country, took about $201bn of online GGR in the US and the EU alone in 2025, according to estimates by Gaming Compliance International (GCI), nearly three times the regulated online figure. Prediction markets, the newest segment, are forecast to earn about $4.5bn in 2026.

How the largest gambling markets are ranked

The ranking counts what regulators report as GGR, stakes minus winnings, across betting, casino, bingo and lotteries, land-based and online. The table lists 30 jurisdictions plus two company-revenue rows, prediction markets and US sweepstakes casinos, which are excluded from the $418bn total. Unlicensed play is sized separately.

Each jurisdiction uses its latest full year, so periods differ: calendar 2025 for most of Europe; fiscal years for Great Britain, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand and the US tribal and lottery figures; and 2024 for Germany, Norway, South Korea, Romania and Portugal’s casinos and Santa Casa. The prediction-market row is the only forward-looking figure, a 2026 forecast. Japan and Singapore are estimates, Ireland uses the top of its regulator’s range. Currencies are converted at each data year’s average rate, and the table notes partial coverage.

Rank Market GGR (USD bn) Basis and year
1 United States 158 Commercial, tribal and lottery, 2025
2 Macau 31 Land-based casinos, 2025
3 Japan 30 Racing and pachinko, estimate
4 Italy 25 All games, 2025
5 Great Britain 23 All games, April 2025 to March 2026
6 Australia 21 All games, 2024-25
7 Canada 16.5 Provinces combined, 2024-25 and 2025-26
8 France 15.9 All games incl. casinos, 2025
9 Germany 15.6 Legal market, 2024
10 Spain 9.1 Excl. bar slot machines, 2025
11 South Korea 8.3 All legal sectors, net sales, 2024
12 Singapore 7.0 Estimate, FY2025
13 Philippines 6.9 Excl. PCSO lottery, 2025
14 Brazil 6.6 Licensed online betting, 2025
15 Hong Kong 6.0 Jockey Club, 2025/26
16 Netherlands 4.6 All games, 2025
17 Prediction markets 4.5 Kalshi and Polymarket revenue, 2026 forecast (only forward-looking row; not in total)
18 South Africa 4.1 Excl. national lottery, year to March 2025
19 Greece 3.5 All games, 2025
20 Romania 3.4 Operator turnover, land and online, 2024
21 US sweepstakes 3.4 VGW group revenue, year to June 2025, before CA and NY bans (not in total)
22 Czech Republic 3.1 All games, 2025
23 Ireland 2.9 High end of regulator range, 2025
24 Portugal 2.9 Online 2025; casinos and Santa Casa 2024
25 Sweden 2.9 All licensed games, 2025
26 Switzerland 2.5 Casinos, lotteries and betting, 2025
27 Belgium 2.3 All games incl. National Lottery, 2025
28 Denmark 1.7 All games, 2025
29 New Zealand 1.7 Four main sectors, 2023-24
30 Norway 1.2 All licensed games, 2024
31 Finland 1.0 Veikkaus, 2025
32 Chile 0.6 Casinos only, 2025

Data: national regulators, government agencies and companies, latest year available; converted at annual average exchange rates. The $418bn total covers the 30 jurisdictions and excludes rows 17 and 21.

The top 10 markets

The 10 largest markets account for about $345bn, or 83% of the regulated total in the table.

United States: $158bn

Commercial casinos, sports betting and iGaming generated a record $78.7bn in 2025, according to the American Gaming Association’s figures from state regulators. Tribal casinos added a record $46.2bn in fiscal 2025, the National Indian Gaming Commission reported. State lotteries sold $96.2bn of traditional games in fiscal 2025 and paid $62.9bn in prizes, leaving $33.3bn, according to preliminary NASPL data.

Macau: $31bn

Macau’s casinos won MOP 247.4bn in 2025, up 9.1%, according to the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ). The figure covers land-based casinos only; Macau has no licensed online gambling.

Japan: about $30bn

Japan’s total is an estimate by The iGaming Europe. Bets on horse, boat, cycle and motorcycle racing reached about ¥8.6tn in fiscal 2024, according to an article by the Ministry of Finance’s Policy Planning Division in the August 2026 issue of the ministry’s journal Finance; the four sports are supervised by the agriculture, economy and transport ministries. The law returns 70% to 80% to bettors, so a 25% takeout gives about ¥2.2tn. Pachinko, legally classed as amusement, took ¥16.2tn in ball rentals in 2025, according to the Japan Productivity Center’s Leisure White Paper 2026; assuming an 85% payout leaves about ¥2.4tn. Lotteries are not included.

Italy: $25bn

Italians staked €165.3bn in 2025 and lost about €21.9bn after winnings, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s first report to Parliament on public gaming, based on data from the Customs and Monopolies Agency (ADM). Online took €100.8bn of the stakes, and 52 new nine-year online concessions, held by 46 operators, went live on 13 November 2025.

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Great Britain: $23bn

Great Britain’s licensed industry generated £17.5bn in gross gambling yield from April 2025 to March 2026, up 4.4%, according to the Gambling Commission’s annual industry statistics, which do not cover Northern Ireland. Remote gaming duty rose to 40% from 21% in April 2026.

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Australia: $21bn

Australians lost A$33.0bn in 2024-25, according to the Queensland Government Statistician’s Office. Pokies took A$17.4bn, more than half. Online casino is banned for domestic players.

Canada: about $16.5bn

Canada has no national figure, so the total adds about C$23.1bn from the provinces: OLG C$9.3bn, Ontario’s private iGaming operators C$4.2bn, Loto-Québec C$3.1bn and BCLC C$2.8bn, with about C$3.7bn between Alberta, Atlantic Canada, Saskatchewan and Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries. Alberta opened a private online market on 13 July 2026.

Alberta iGaming: 48 platforms approved as transition ends

France: $15.9bn

French players lost €14.1bn in 2025, up 3%, including land-based casinos, according to the Autorité nationale des jeux (ANJ). Online, limited to sports betting, poker and horse racing, took €2.6bn. Online casino remains illegal.

Germany: $15.6bn

Germany’s legal market generated €14.4bn in 2024, up 5%, according to the Joint Gambling Authority of the States (GGL). The GGL puts the unlicensed share of the online market at about 25%, a figure German operator associations dispute.

Spain: $9.1bn

Spain’s market reached about €8.1bn in 2025, according to the Directorate General for Gambling Regulation (DGOJ): state lotteries €5.2bn, licensed online operators €1.7bn and regional operators €1.2bn, excluding bar slot machines (181,248 units). A €700 daily deposit cap across operators starts on 26 March 2027.

The other 20 jurisdictions

Below the top 10, the ranking runs from South Korea at $8.3bn to Chile at $0.6bn, grouped here by region and listed in rank order.

Asia-Pacific

South Korea’s legal sectors kept KRW 11.4tn after prizes in 2024, according to the National Gambling Control Commission: lotteries KRW 3.5tn, casinos KRW 3.2tn, sports toto KRW 2.3tn, horse racing KRW 1.7tn and cycle racing, motorboat racing and bullfighting KRW 0.6tn between them. Most of the casino total came from foreigner-only casinos, as Kangwon Land is the only one open to Koreans.

Singapore is an estimate: Singapore Pools kept S$3.25bn after prizes in 2024-25, and the casino tax paid implies about S$6bn of casino win, by The iGaming Europe’s calculation. The Philippines reached PHP 396.1bn in 2025, with e-games overtaking licensed casinos, according to PAGCOR.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club earned HK$46.8bn from racing, football and Mark Six in 2025/26 on a record HK$331.7bn turnover. New Zealanders lost NZ$2.79bn in 2023-24, NZ$1.04bn of it on pub and club pokies, according to the Department of Internal Affairs.

Europe

Dutch GGR fell to €4.1bn in 2025 as online dropped 21% after deposit limits and a tax rise, the KSA said, and the tax went up again, from 34.2% to 37.8%, in January 2026. Greece’s market generated €3.07bn in 2025, up 6.7%, with online up 11.7% to €1.19bn, according to the Hellenic Gaming Commission (HGC). OPAP, now controlled by Allwyn, took €1.49bn from its retail agencies and VLTs.

Romania’s licensed land-based and online operators reported revenue of more than RON 15.5bn in 2024, according to company filings compiled by Termene.ro, as the National Office for Gambling (ONJN) publishes taxes but no market total. The figure measures company turnover, which is not strictly comparable with the GGR used for the other markets. ONJN collected RON 4.3bn in gambling taxes that year, RON 2.29bn of it from online operators. Councils in Iași county and Timișoara have moved to close slot halls since February 2026.

ONJN reform: Romania’s regulator plans new gambling law

Czech players lost about CZK 68bn in 2025 on CZK 1.07tn of stakes, 71.7% of it placed online, according to the Financial Administration. Ireland’s regulator put 2025 GGR at €1.17bn to €2.57bn in its first annual report. The table ranks Ireland on the high end; the low end would place it 29th.

Portugal combines €1.21bn of online GGR in 2025, reported by the Gambling Regulation and Inspection Service (SRIJ), with about €0.3bn from casinos and €1.07bn that Santa Casa kept after prizes in 2024, from €3.14bn of lottery sales. Sweden’s licensed market made SEK 28.2bn, with 84% of competitive play channelled to licensed sites, according to Spelinspektionen.

Switzerland adds CHF 879m from casinos, reported by the Federal Gaming Board (ESBK), to CHF 1.20bn from lotteries and sports betting, reported by Gespa. Belgium combines €1.62bn from the Gaming Commission, 59% of it online, with €400m kept by the National Lottery from €1.67bn of sales. Denmark made DKK 11.5bn, with online casino passing lotteries as its largest segment for the first time.

Norway’s licensed market made NOK 12.8bn in 2024, 80% of it through state-owned Norsk Tipping, and the Norwegian Gambling Authority estimates unlicensed foreign operators took a further NOK 1.1bn to 1.5bn. Veikkaus, which keeps its online monopoly until licensed operators enter Finland in July 2027, made about €902m in 2025.

Rest of the world

Brazil’s licensed operators kept R$36.9bn in 2025, according to preliminary Ministry of Finance data. Provisional Measure 1,394/2026, signed on 25 September, bans fixed-odds betting, and licensed sites went offline from 6 October; the measure is in force and lapses unless Congress converts it into law. The Supreme Federal Court heard 34 speakers on the ban on 3 November without ruling.

South Africa reached R74.5bn in the year to March 2025, 60% of it online betting, according to the National Gambling Board. Chile’s casinos won CLP 549bn in 2025, according to the Superintendence of Casinos.

Prediction markets, sweepstakes and the unlicensed market

Kalshi is expected to make $3.7bn in gross revenue in 2026 and Polymarket $842m, together about $4.5bn, according to PitchBook’s Q4 2026 prediction markets report.

In April, Bank of America projected that US sports event contracts could reach $1.1tn a year at maturity, earning about $10bn in fees, and expected about $100bn of US sports event contract trading in 2026, as covered in our analysis of the trillion-dollar trade. That forecast has since been overtaken: prediction markets across all event categories traded $123.3bn in October 2026 alone, according to Artemis data.

VGW, which runs Chumba Casino, LuckyLand Slots and Global Poker, reported group revenue of A$5.2bn for the year to June 2025 in accounts filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. The figure covers the whole group and a year that ended before California and New York banned sweepstakes casinos.

The Trillion-Dollar Trade: How Prediction Markets Are Reshaping US Sports Betting

Unlicensed online operators took $5.9tn in stakes in 2025 and 78% of global online GGR, according to GCI. For the EU, GCI puts unlicensed GGR at €91.6bn, or 72%, in a study funded by the Campaign for Fairer Gambling and built from web traffic. A study by Fincord Intelligence, published by the Betting and Gaming Council, estimated the gross revenue of the global unlicensed online market at about $50bn in 2025.

Crypto betting estimates sit further apart, Forbes reported. Yield Sec put 2024 crypto GGR at $81.4bn, including crypto sports betting and prediction markets, in research sponsored by the Campaign for Fairer Gambling. Tanzanite, an analytics firm supported by Stake, put it above $10bn and called the Yield Sec figure inflated.

Regulated, online, prediction and unlicensed markets compared

Online accounts for about $74bn, or 18%, of the regulated total, counting the 17 markets whose regulators split GGR by channel. Germany is left out because the GGL publishes no channel split, and the Czech Republic because its Financial Administration splits stakes, not GGR. GCI’s estimate of unlicensed online GGR in the US and the EU alone, about $201bn, is nearly three times the regulated online figure.

Segment Size (USD bn) Measure and year Source
Regulated gambling, 30 jurisdictions 418 GGR, latest year National regulators
Of which online 74 GGR, 17 markets reporting a split National regulators, AGA
Of which land-based and lotteries 344 GGR, incl. markets without a split National regulators
Prediction markets, revenue 4.5 Kalshi and Polymarket, 2026 forecast PitchBook
Prediction markets, volume 123.3 (monthly) Contracts traded, October 2026 only Artemis
Unlicensed online, US and EU 201 GGR, 2025 GCI
Unlicensed online, global 5,900 Stakes, 2025 GCI
Crypto gambling 10 to 81 GGR, 2024 Tanzanite, Yield Sec

Data: as listed; online covers the US, Great Britain, Italy, France, Spain, Canada, the Philippines, Brazil, the Netherlands, South Africa, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark and Finland.

How the numbers moved

Spain’s online casino, betting and poker GGR more than doubled between 2021 and 2025, according to the DGOJ, and Ontario’s private market more than tripled in three years, according to iGaming Ontario, as tracked in our coverage of Spain’s online market and Ontario’s iGaming results.

Indicator Earlier Latest Change
Spain, online casino, betting and poker (DGOJ) €798m (2021) €1,685m (2025) +111%
Ontario private iGaming (iGO) C$1.3bn (2022-23) C$4.2bn (2025-26) +223%
Kalshi revenue $24m (2024) $3.7bn (2026 forecast) About 150x
Unlicensed online stakes, global (GCI) $5.1tn (2023) $5.9tn (2025) +16%
US unlicensed online GGR (GCI) $67.1bn (2024) $97.4bn (2025) +45%
US licensed online GGR (GCI) $23.0bn (2024) $28.3bn (2025) +23%
Great Britain GGY (UKGC) £16.8bn (2024-25) £17.5bn (2025-26) +4.4%
Portugal online GGR (SRIJ) €1.07bn (2024) €1.21bn (2025) +13%
Netherlands GGR, real terms (KSA) €4.5bn (2024, inflation-adjusted) €4.1bn (2025) -8.9%

Data: DGOJ, iGaming Ontario, Sacra (Kalshi 2024), PitchBook (2026), GCI, UKGC, SRIJ, KSA. The Great Britain change is the UKGC’s, calculated on unrounded figures. The Dutch change is in real terms, as the KSA adjusts the 2024 figure for inflation; all other rows are nominal.

Markets outside the table

China’s welfare and sports lotteries, the only legal gambling products on the mainland, are left out because the state reports sales, not GGR. Estimated the way Japan and Singapore are, the RMB 628bn of lottery sales the Ministry of Finance reported for 2025, less a prize share of about 60%, would leave about RMB 250bn, or roughly $35bn, which would likely rank China second. Mexico, Poland, Austria, Turkey, Ukraine, Colombia, Nigeria, Kenya and Argentina publish taxes or partial data only, with no official market total. The April ranking of online markets covers online GGR only.

Top iGaming Markets in the World by Size

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Bartosz Hrydziuszko

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Bartosz Hrydziuszko founded The iGaming Europe in 2024 and heads its content team. He sets the editorial direction with the Advisory Board and, with the editors, approves the fact sheet behind every story before the operations team publishes it.

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