Legal Gaming Grows for Fourth Consecutive Year: AGA Report

The casino business continues its hot streak. In 2024, legal US gaming revenue grew for the fourth consecutive year to $71.92 billion, according to the American Gaming Association. This broke the previous record in 2023 when revenue was $66.5 billion.

In his annual State Of The Industry presentation, AGA CEO and President Bill Miller shared industry details about how and where the industry is growing and the challenges it faces such as unregulated gambling. 

Continued growth in commercial gaming revenue is on a comfortable path. 

Overall legal gaming revenue was up 7.5% at land-based and online casinos compared to 2023. Online casinos and sports betting each grew by more than 25%, while land-based revenue was up just under 1%.

While online gaming is growing rapidly, traditional casinos still make up the lion’s share of overall gaming revenue in the U.S., according to the Gaming Association’s report. 

Land-based gaming, which includes slots, table games, and in-person sports betting, accounted for $50.32 billion, or 70%, of total revenue in 2024.

Slot Play Grows Across The US

While all gambling markets are different, there's a noticeable similarity – Casino guests love games that likely don't include human interaction.

Traditional table games and slot machines in casinos collected a total of $49.78 billion in revenue last year. The slight increase from 2023 was boosted by strong slot machine play. 

Specifically, slot machines generated $36.06 billion, up 1.6% from a year ago. Table game revenue shrank by 1.7% year-over-year to $10.14 billion.

Slot machine revenue includes video poker, keno, and electronic table games. Table games include live dealer blackjack, craps, and three-card poker.

The increase in slot machine revenue isn't too much of a surprise. A few reasons for the rise could be continued advancements in game technology, the removal of video poker games with favorable returns to players, the influence of popular slot machine YouTubers, and the continued investment by casinos in high-limit slot rooms.

Overall, 14 of the 27 states offering traditional casino gambling saw an increase in combined revenue from slot and table games compared to 2023.

Top Gaming Markets in the US

Once again, the Vegas Strip is the top gaming revenue market in the U.S., despite a slight decline last year. The rest of the top four markets remained the same as in 2023:

2. Atlantic City

3. Chicagoland (includes Indiana)

4. Washington, DC/Baltimore (includes West Virginia)

New York City jumped into the top five this year, with casinos in Queens and Yonkers showing strong performance. 

The biggest casino revenue generators, outside of Las Vegas and … Tunica? Biloxi?

Resorts World New York (Queens) was the number one revenue-generating casino outside of Colorado, Mississippi, and Nevada last year despite only offering slots and electronic table games. The rest of the top five casinos include:

2. MGM National Harbor (Maryland)

3. Encore Boston Harbor (Massachusetts)

4. Borgata (New Jersey)

5. Live! Casino & Hotel Maryland

Despite not having a top-five revenue-generating casino, Chicago-area casinos saw increased revenue, thanks to new openings in 2024.

Las Vegas Flexes Its Muscles

Sin City had a typically strong showing in gaming revenue in 2024. Las Vegas remains the king of the industry, with three of the top 15 gaming areas in the U.S. One of these segments made a significant jump from last year’s rankings.

The Top 20 casino markets in the US.

The Vegas Strip remains the No. 1 gaming revenue market in the U.S. The Boulder Strip, which includes Henderson, also held steady at No. 10.

Downtown Las Vegas rose from the No. 17 gaming market in the U.S. to No. 13 last year, with a 2.4% increase in gaming revenue. The three-spot jump was the largest in the nation.

North of Las Vegas, the Reno/Sparks area also saw an increase in gaming revenue last year. This area's $936 million was good for the No. 11 gaming market in the U.S.

Unregulated Gambling Remains A Concern

The American Gaming Association is a trade organization for the regulated gambling industry. As such, unregulated games pose a challenge for those spending time and money to become legally available in land-based and online casinos. 

Miller noted that unregulated gambling comes in different forms in different locations. Unlike regulated companies, these gambling providers don’t pay taxes or offer the same level of service to the community.

During his presentation, Miller discussed unregulated gambling machines around the country:

“They sneak in through the back door, circumventing gaming laws and operating in the shadows outside of regulatory oversight, exploiting legal loopholes to force their products on unsuspecting communities, like the 580,000 unregulated so-called skill games that have spread across the United States generating $109 billion in illegal bets.”

After touching on offshore sports betting he touched on the latest unregulated gambling markets such as sweepstakes betting and currency exchanges by saying:

“Then there’s the newer categories of unregulated actors that appear to bypass or circumvent state gaming, from currency exchanges to digital asset platforms. These entrants deploy legal acrobatics to avoid calling themselves betting or gambling, only then to offer products that most would most universally agree are gambling, yet without the safeguards and regulatory constraints that build consumer trust, promote responsibility and support state budgets.”

Since the introduction of Daily Fantasy Sports, numerous companies have been looking for legal loopholes to grab a piece of the gambling pie in America.