Tribal gaming receipts hit an all-time high last year, new figures show, with commercial casinos also reporting record revenues. However, sports betting has taken a dip, with industry chiefs blaming the “explosive rise” of prediction markets.
The most recent National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC) gross gaming revenue figures show a rise of $2.3 billion on 2024 receipts, making for a 5.3% year-on-year rise to over $46 billion and eclipsing 2024’s all-time high.
Speaking to Native News Online, NIGC Associate Commissioner Sharon Avery said that compacts had “done well,” and called 2025 “another strong year” for tribal operators.
Tribes across the US are eyeing further expansion in the months ahead, with multiple tribal casinos opening this year, more to come in the near future, and others launching online operations.
Record Revenues: Commercial & Tribal Operators Experiencing Growth
The NIGC divides its members’ operations into eight geographic regions. All but one of these saw a rise in both the number of operations per region and gross gaming revenue.
Revenues in the District of Columbia saw the highest year-on-year uptick, rising by almost 10% to over $11.2 billion.
And there was also reason for cheer in the commercial gambling sector, per American Gaming Association figures. May gaming revenues were up 4.6%, driven by a year-on-year 15% rise in iGaming receipts and GGR figures of $4.7 billion in the conventional casino sector.
This comes just months after the AGA reported its members broke the industry’s all-time high GGR figures for 2025, rising over 9% in 2025 numbers to reach almost $79 billion.
AGA: Prediction Markets to Blame for Falling Tax Revenues
But it was not all good news for tribes and gaming operators. Sports betting in May 2026 was down almost 2% from the same month last year and totaled $1.34 billion. The sports betting handle also fell by 0.4% to just over $12 billion.
This follows disappointing sports betting volume figures from Illinois, where sports wagers fell over 10% year-on-year to just over $1.1 billion.
May marks the second month this year during which sports betting revenue has contracted. Per some estimates, prediction markets hit a total May volume of over $20 billion, with volumes shooting up to $50 billion after the start of the World Cup.
In its report, the AGA wrote that legal sports betting revenue and state gaming taxes had “declined in the face of expanded backdoor prediction market competition.”
Elsewhere in the report, the AGA fired out similar-sounding barbs at prediction market operators.
“Betting on prediction markets continues to explode outside of state regulatory guardrails,” the authors complained.
They also blamed prediction market players for a 2.4% drop in sports betting-related tax revenues.
The AGA claimed that operators are “offering illegal sports bets through prediction market platforms, none of which pay state gaming taxes.”
This, they added, “deprives seniors’ pension plans and responsible gaming programs, among other victims, of critical funding.”
The AGA, tribes, and state regulators remain locked in a fierce legal struggle with prediction-market players such as Kalshi, Polymarket, and Robinhood.
Kalshi and the like have a powerful protector, however: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The federal regulator says permit-holding prediction market platforms offer financial products, not sports betting services.
CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said earlier this month that none of the platforms it regulates offer gambling products. Gambling, Selig insisted, is done exclusively in casinos.
