US commercial gaming revenue falls 0.6% to $6.48bn in August

US commercial gaming revenue reached $6.48bn in August 2026, a decline of 0.6% compared with the same month in 2025, according to the American Gaming Association (AGA). The association attributed the overall fall mainly to a contraction in sports betting, while traditional casinos and iGaming continued to grow.

Traditional casinos generated $4.44bn, up 0.9% year on year. Slot machines contributed $3.25bn, an increase of 1%, and table games reached $885.91m, up 2.1%. iGaming revenue was $1.03bn, 12.3% higher than a year earlier, although the AGA noted a slowing pace of growth in the absence of newly regulated markets.

Sports betting revenue fell 15.6% to about $1bn, while handle was $10.89bn, down 0.7% year on year. The hold rate dropped to 9.2% from 10.8% in August 2025. The AGA said handle was affected by the availability of sports betting through prediction markets and by the later start of the college football season. Apart from June and July, which benefited from the World Cup effect, sports betting handle has fallen year on year in every month since December 2025, the association said.

Regulated gaming generated $1.46bn in tax revenue for state programmes in August, down 1.5% from August 2025, with taxes from sports betting down 14%. The AGA pointed to competition from skill games operators, sweepstakes casinos and prediction market platforms, which it said offer sports betting in effect outside state authorisation systems and without paying the related gaming taxes. The association estimated that since the start of 2025 these platforms had diverted $1.56bn in potential tax revenue from state governments, a loss it said could affect funding for public programmes, including those for pensioners and responsible gaming initiatives.

The August figures show that growth in online gaming and traditional casinos did not offset the weakness in sports betting, according to the report. The regulatory perimeter of prediction markets and their relationship with the licensing and taxation system for gaming remain a focus of debate in the US.