US Sports Gambling Industry Totals $220 Billion Since 2018

As the NFL season gets underway, sports betting has reportedly become big business in the United States.

Since a Supreme Court ruling overturned a law that prevented state-sanctioned sportsbooks in 2018, over $220 billion has been wagered in the U.S. sports gambling industry, Bloomberg reported Friday (Sept. 6).

The beneficiaries of this trend include mobile betting apps like FanDuel and DraftKings as well as betting kiosks at stadiums, according to the report.

Much of the gambling is focused on NFL games, with the league’s 2023 season accounting for an estimated $26.7 billion of the amount bet by Americans, the report said.

Despite the growing popularity of online sportsbooks and online gaming, the options for instant payouts remain relatively rare, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Generation Instant: Gamers and Winning.”

Less than half of gamers now have access to instant payments, even though 8 in 10 gamers prefer immediate access to their winnings, the report found.

Among the gamers who are not expecting (or are not offered) instant payouts, 44% said they receive their winnings via cash, 17% said they receive non-instant digital payments and 11% collected their winnings in the form of a check, according to the report.

When instant distributions are available, 18% opt for immediate payouts, with 8% collecting their winnings in digital wallets and about 3% transferring their winnings to a bank account, per the report.

The gaming sector is one of the leaders in offering instant payments, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Meeting the Demand for Instant Ad Hoc Payments.”

Gaming firms report that instant payment methods represent 37% of their ad hoc payment transactions, according to the report.

DraftKings reported in August that the number of new online sports betting and iGaming customers it gained during the second quarter increased nearly 80% compared to the same period in 2023.

“We very efficiently acquired many more new customers than we expected and saw continued healthy existing customer engagement in the second quarter,” DraftKings CEO and co-founder Jason Robins said Aug. 2 during the company’s quarterly earnings call.