For most of the past decade, European gaming executives treated the United States as a market that talked big and paid slowly. Licences were scarce, the rules changed by state, and the returns rarely justified the legal bills. That reading is now out of date. Across 2025 the American online casino business posted the kind of state-level growth that prompts chief financial officers in London, Malta, and Stockholm to ask their strategy teams for a proper briefing rather than a footnote.
The interest is specific rather than sentimental. GamingToday, an American gaming publication, keeps a running record of how each regulated state performs from one month to the next, and this casino analysis has become a quiet reference point for European teams trying to size the opportunity from across the Atlantic. What those figures describe is a market that has stopped behaving like a pilot project and started behaving like a mature product line, at least in the handful of states where lawmakers have allowed real-money play.
This piece reads the American boom the way a European operator or investor would read any new market: as a business case with a regulatory shape, a revenue engine, a defined set of risks, and a short list of lessons that travel well across the Atlantic and a few that do not.
Join The European Business Briefing
New subscribers this quarter are entered into a draw to win a Rolex Submariner. Join 40,000+ founders, investors and executives who read EBM every day.
SubscribeThe Numbers That Caught Europe’s Attention
The headline that reached European boardrooms was not a national total but three state totals. Pennsylvania, the largest regulated online casino market in the country, reported statewide online gaming revenue climbing toward roughly 3.5 billion dollars in 2025. Michigan cleared the 3 billion dollar mark, and New Jersey, the market that started the modern American story back in 2013, came in close behind at just under 3 billion dollars. Those three states alone account for close to nine tenths of all regulated online casino revenue in the United States, which tells you how concentrated the money still is.
Two details inside those numbers matter more to a European reader than the totals themselves. First, in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, online casino revenue passed the revenue of the physical commercial casinos in the state for the first time in 2025. A digital channel that regulators once treated as a supplement to brick-and-mortar venues is now the larger business in two of the country’s most watched jurisdictions. Second, the growth has come from a small footprint. Only a short list of states permit real-money online casino play, which means the reported expansion is happening inside a market that most of the American population still cannot legally access.
Market research firms put the wider picture in perspective. Estimates vary with definitions, but several analysts place the online casino segment near 6 billion dollars for 2025 and project double-digit annual growth through the decade, with one widely cited forecast pointing to compound growth above 16 percent a year to 2031. Those figures are directional rather than exact, since firms count sports betting, poker, and casino differently, but the direction is consistent across sources.
A Market Built State by State, Not Country by Country
The first thing a European operator has to absorb is that there is no American online casino market in the way there is a British or a Danish one. There is a collection of state markets, each with its own licence, its own tax rate, its own approved supplier list, and its own regulator. A company that wants to serve players in three states needs three separate approvals and, in practice, three separate compliance teams. The barrier to entry is not a single national gate but a series of local ones.
For continental executives this fragmentation feels familiar in an uncomfortable way. Europe spent years discovering that a single-market ideal does not automatically produce a single operating reality. The rollout of the bloc’s crypto rulebook made the point again in 2026, when a licensing deadline reshaped which platforms could serve which customers. As one recent analysis of the crypto licensing deadline argued, a shared framework can still create clear winners and losers depending on who is ready for it. The American gaming map produces the same effect through a different mechanism. Instead of one rulebook applied unevenly, it has many rulebooks applied locally, and success depends on picking the right states and moving early.
The upside of the American structure is that it lets an operator test a full product in one jurisdiction before committing capital elsewhere. The downside is cost. Multiplying licences, integrations, and audits across states eats margin in a way a passportable European licence does not. European teams weighing an American entry are buying optionality on future state openings, and the price of that option is the overhead of running a business in several regulatory dialects at once.
Where the Revenue Actually Comes From
Understanding the American revenue engine is where the analysis gets useful, because the mechanics differ from the European habit. In Europe, online casino and sports betting grew up together and are often sold as one account from the start. In the United States, sports betting arrived first and at scale after the 2018 Supreme Court decision that opened the door to state-by-state legalisation. Online casino followed, and much of its growth has come from converting existing sports bettors into casino players.
That cross-sell is the quiet driver behind the 2025 numbers. Industry estimates suggest the share of sports-betting customers who also play casino games in a legal state has moved from roughly one in eight a few years ago to about one in four or five today. Every operator with a large sportsbook database is sitting on a conversion pipeline, and the casino product carries better margins because the house edge is fixed rather than dependent on match results. For a European group evaluating an American partner, the size of that sportsbook database is often a better indicator of casino potential than any headline casino figure.
Two other features matter to an outside reader. Mobile play dominates, with most wagers placed on phones rather than desktops, which raises the value of app quality and payment speed. And revenue concentration is high, with a small group of high-value players producing a large share of the total. That concentration cuts both ways: it rewards operators good at retention and player-protection, and it draws regulatory attention when a few accounts drive outsized spend.
How the American and European Models Line Up
Executives asking whether the American approach can be copied usually want a side-by-side view rather than a narrative. The table below sets out the working differences that matter most when a European group models an American entry.
| Dimension | United States | Europe |
|---|---|---|
| Licence structure | Separate licence per state | National or passportable licence, varies by country |
| Market access | Small number of states, most population excluded | Broad access across most of the continent |
| Product history | Sports betting first, casino following | Casino and betting grown together |
| Tax rates | Wide spread, set state by state | Wide spread, generally set nationally |
| Payment rails | Card, bank transfer, and app-based methods | Card, bank transfer, and local instant methods |
| Growth stage | Early, concentrated in a few states | Mature, online near 40 percent of total revenue |
| Main growth lever | Converting sports bettors to casino | New products and channel shift from retail |
The single most important line in that table is the growth stage. Europe is closer to maturity, with online play already approaching parity with physical venues. The United States is earlier, with most of its potential still locked behind state legislatures that have not acted. A European operator is therefore not buying into a market that is already large. It is buying into a bet that more states will open, and that the current concentration in three of them will spread.
The Regulatory Lessons Worth Copying
For all the talk of American dynamism, the parts of the model that European regulators and operators are actually studying are the careful ones. State regulators in the leading markets have built approval systems that keep unlicensed operators out and hold licensed ones to detailed technical standards. Geolocation is enforced strictly, so a player physically outside an approved state cannot log in and wager, and identity checks at signup are tighter than many European players are used to. The result is a walled market that is small but clean, and cleanliness is exactly what European policymakers under pressure over problem gambling want to be able to show.
A second lesson is about tax design. American states have found that setting the online casino tax rate too high pushes operators toward thinner offerings and drives some players back toward unlicensed sites, while a sensible rate produces a stable, growing tax base. Several European finance ministries reviewing their own rates are watching which American states get that balance right. The underlying question, how to price a licence so the legal market outcompetes the illegal one, is identical on both sides of the Atlantic.
The third lesson runs the other way. The American habit of legalising sports betting years before online casino created a large, primed audience that casino operators could convert later. Some European markets that opened casino and betting at the same time never built that sequencing advantage. It is too late to replay the order, but the observation shapes how European groups now think about bundling, sequencing, and which product to lead with in a new territory.
Capital Flows and the Investor Case
The business story is also a capital story. American online casino growth has drawn a mix of domestic operators, European groups with United States arms, and technology suppliers who sell the games and platforms rather than run the customer relationship. For investors, the supplier layer is often the more interesting position, because a games studio or platform provider can earn from every operator in every state without carrying the marketing cost of acquiring players. That business-to-business layer is where several European technology firms already earn a meaningful share of their revenue.
Merger and acquisition activity follows the same logic. A European group that wants American exposure without building state by state can buy a company that already holds the licences and the market access. Those assets carry a premium precisely because the licensing process is slow and expensive to replicate. The investor question is whether that premium is justified by the growth still to come, or whether it already prices in state openings that legislatures may delay for years.
That political dependence is the part of the case European boards find hardest to model. In most European markets, the size of the addressable population is broadly settled. In the United States, it is a moving target set by dozens of separate legislatures, each with its own budget pressures, casino lobby, and view of online gambling. A model that assumes steady openings can look very different from one that assumes a long pause, and both are defensible today.
The Risks Hiding Inside the Growth Story
No European board should read the American numbers without reading the risks alongside them. The first is legislative stall. Most large American states, including California and Texas, do not permit real-money online casino play, and there is no guarantee they will act soon. Growth projections that assume rapid expansion into those states are betting on a political outcome that keeps failing to arrive. A cautious model treats new state openings as upside, not as base case.
The second risk sits at the edge of the market, in the sweepstakes and social casino category. These free-to-play products let users play casino-style games without wagering real money directly, and they have grown quickly in states where real-money play is banned. They are a distinct model, not a form of licensed online casino, and regulators have started to push back. California’s Assembly Bill 831, effective at the start of 2026, restricts the dual-currency sweepstakes model that many of these operators rely on. Any European group tempted by the reach of that grey-edge segment should treat it as legally unsettled rather than as a shortcut into restricted states.
The third risk is one European regulators already know well: problem gambling and the political reaction to it. High revenue concentration among a small group of players invites scrutiny, and the public-health arguments reshaping advertising and deposit rules in Europe are gaining traction in American statehouses. An operator that builds on aggressive acquisition without matching investment in player protection is building on ground regulators can shift under it. The European experience of tightening rules is, in this sense, a preview rather than a contrast.
Reading the American Boom Against Europe’s Own Data
Placed next to Europe’s own figures, the American boom looks less like a revolution and more like an earlier stage of a familiar curve. The European Gaming and Betting Association reports that Europe’s gambling revenue reached 123.4 billion euros in 2024, and its market breakdown for the year puts online play at close to 39 percent of the total, on course to cross 40 percent as the decade progresses. Online gambling revenue in Europe stood near 47.9 billion euros in 2024 and is projected to keep climbing toward the end of the decade.
Set that beside an American online casino segment estimated in the single-digit billions of dollars, and the contrast is instructive. Europe already has the scale and the channel shift that the United States is only beginning to build. What the United States has that Europe does not is headroom, in the form of large states that have yet to open. The strategic reading is that the American market rewards patience and state selection, while the European market rewards defending share in an environment closer to full. The two are not the same opportunity, and treating them as interchangeable is the mistake most likely to burn capital.
The data also tempers the excitement about growth rates. Double-digit percentages off a small base are impressive, but the base matters. As the American segment gets larger, those figures will cool toward the single-digit growth Europe’s mature online sector now records. A board pricing an American asset on today’s rate should ask how much of it is simply the arithmetic of a small starting point.
What European Boardrooms Should Do With This in 2026
The practical conclusion is not that European groups should rush in, nor that they should ignore the market. It is that they should treat it as a portfolio of state-level options with very different maturities, and price it accordingly. The three leading states are already competitive and expensive to enter. The value, if there is any, lies in being positioned for the next wave of openings without overpaying for a wave that may be slow to break.
For operators, that means favouring capital-light entry points, the supplier layer, technology licensing, or a stake in a group that already holds the approvals, over building brand and licences from scratch in each state. For investors, it means separating the two questions the market tends to blur: how good is the current business in the states that are open, and how likely is the political expansion the valuation assumes. Answering those separately produces a clearer view than any single growth headline.
The American online casino boom is real, and the numbers coming out of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Jersey are not a fluke. But the lesson European operators are actually taking from 2026 is a measured one. The opportunity is genuine, the structure is harder than it looks, and the discipline that built Europe’s own online market, careful licensing, sensible tax design, and serious player protection, is exactly the discipline the American market will need as it grows into the size its boosters already claim for it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are European gaming companies studying the American market now?
Because the growth stopped being theoretical. In 2025 several American states reported online casino revenue large enough to overtake their physical casinos, which changed the market from a long-term prospect into a present business case. European groups that once dismissed the United States as slow are now modelling entry seriously, mostly to understand where future revenue might come from as their home markets mature.
How does US online casino regulation differ from the European approach?
The United States has no national online casino licence. Each state that permits real-money play issues its own approval, sets its own tax rate, and runs its own regulator, so an operator serving several states manages several compliance regimes at once. Europe relies more on national or passportable licences that give broader reach from a single approval, which lowers the per-market overhead.
Which US states drive most of the online casino revenue?
Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Jersey together produce close to nine tenths of the country’s regulated online casino revenue. Pennsylvania is the largest, Michigan and New Jersey follow closely, and a small group of additional states makes up the remainder. Most of the American population lives in states where real-money online casino play is still not legal.
What does California’s AB 831 mean for the sweepstakes model?
Assembly Bill 831 took effect at the start of 2026 and restricts the dual-currency sweepstakes model that many free-to-play social casino operators use in states without legal online casinos. It signals that regulators view that grey-edge segment as unsettled. European groups considering the reach of sweepstakes products in restricted states should treat the model as legally exposed rather than as a reliable route to market.
Is the American growth rate realistic for European operators to expect?
Not on a like-for-like basis. The American segment is growing fast partly because it is starting from a small base, and those percentages will cool as the market gets larger. Europe’s online sector is already close to maturity, with online play near 40 percent of total gambling revenue, so it records steadier single-digit growth. The two markets are at different points on the same curve.
