• The US gambling industry is fighting legal and regulatory battles on a few fronts as it expands.
• Regulators are examining gambling ad practices and disruptors like prediction markets and sweepstakes.
• The upshot could be a "regulatory reset" that may change how gambling companies operate.

What should gambling look like in America? A new wave of lawsuits and legislation is testing the boundaries.

We got a clearer picture of what it means to be a gambling society in the US last year. Sport betting soared as Americans legally wagered $148 billion on sports, 24% more than the year before, per the American Gambling Association's estimates.

But concerns also rose around gambling addiction and whether the industry is doing enough to protect the most at-risk, including young men. High-profile betting scandals rocked the sports world and highlighted the risks for athletes.

Culturally, there's been a growing sense that maybe the expansion of gambling "was too much too fast," Chris Grove, a prominent industry investor with Acies Investments, told Business Insider.

Some lawmakers have sought to rein in gambling companies. New York, which took more money on sports bets than any other state last year, is considering new guardrails on how much a person can bet in a day and on certain advertising practices, for example. There's also a renewed effort this year to introduce federal regulations on gambling.

Meanwhile, expansion of online casino legislation has screeched to a halt, leaving operators wondering where their next phase of growth will come from.

And new entrants and ways to risk money like sports predictions and sweepstakes casinos are disrupting the landscape — and drawing regulatory scrutiny.

Several industry insiders said it feels like these issues, which have been brewing for the last year or more, are all coming to a head in 2025. These key battlegrounds could define the future of the gambling industry and consumer protections.

Sports predictions could create a pathway to betting across the country

Prediction markets are sucking up a lot of the oxygen in the room right now, five industry insiders said.

These markets let users across the country put money on potential winners of certain sporting events. Consumers can go on a website like Kalshi to "predict" who will win a series in the NBA playoffs, for example.

These markets are being run by commodities and financial platforms, rather than gambling operators. But Kalshi and some other companies offering sports predictions have received cease and desist orders this year from gambling regulators in several states, including Nevada and New Jersey.

Kalshi has taken the issue to the courts, arguing that it's regulated by the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, not these state gambling authorities.

The legal fights appear to be going Kalshi's way. The federal courts in Nevada and New Jersey have so far sided with Kalshi and blocked the cease-and-desists. This month, the CTFC also dropped an earlier appeal against the company's election predictions, signaling that the commission has a favorable view on prediction markets overall.

"Kalshi has won a couple of early rounds, but it is still early in the fight," said James Kilsby, chief analyst at Vixio, a regulatory tech company that works with the gambling industry.

A big question is how much fight the states have in them. The answer will likely tie back to how much tax revenue they risk losing, said Andrew Kim, an appellate and gaming litigator at Goodwin.

Kalshi and other sports prediction markets offer a very narrow product. So far, these platforms don't offer parlays or prop bets.

"There's definitely a path where all of that grows and becomes bigger and becomes an actual threat to the regime of sports betting," said Dustin Gouker, a gaming industry consultant who follows prediction markets closely in his Closing Line newsletter.

If sports predictions are cleared to continue, prediction markets could create a path for gambling companies to operate in all 50 states. Gambling operators DraftKings and FanDuel told investors on recent earnings calls that they're interested in a prediction market product.

"People in the industry at the moment are very much in a wait-and-see mode on this one," said Steve Ruddock, a gambling industry analyst and consultant. "What everybody needs to be concerned about in the industry is being left behind."

Sweepstakes casinos are under siege

While the early momentum for sports predictions suggests they may be here to stay, the future of online sweepstakes is less certain.

These games, from sites like Chumba Casino and McLuck, can resemble slots, table games, or sports betting, but they allow players to play for free and win digital coins that can be exchanged for cash. Users can typically also buy and wager these coins, which is where the line between sweepstakes and a regular online casino really starts to blur.

Several states, including New York, Connecticut, Illinois, and Montana, are considering banning them. New York's bill would make it illegal to operate, promote, or support these businesses.

Florida and a few other states also considered bills rejecting these games, but those efforts have either failed or stalled.

"The industry is very focused on sweepstakes operations," Kilsby said. "That is very much a major policy issue of 2025 that wasn't really the case in previous years."

It's a big deal in the industry because these games are regulated differently from online casino games, which can make them available to a wider set of consumers. Some, like a Washington court, say they're illegal gambling. Others argue they're simply innovating in a common gaming category: sweepstakes.

Several recent lawsuits have been filed against sweepstakes operators.

Rewriting the rules — and taxes — for gambling companies

Lawsuits against gambling companies are also piling up in 2025.

New cases are challenging marketing and promotional practices, such as VIP programs and certain bonus offers.

Baltimore City, for example, sued DraftKings and FanDuel in April over what it alleged are "predatory practices." The complaint called out both "bonus bets" and VIP programs, which are loyalty plays that the complaint says "personalize the inducements to gamble."

Customers sue gambling operators all the time — cases like these aren't new to the industry. But the "tidal wave" of recent consumer litigation could be a beachhead of a broader pushback, said Kim at Goodwin, who thinks the industry will likely see more of these lawsuits.

It's hard to tell what the lasting impact will be.

Kilsby said it's common for countries to experience a "regulatory reset" after a period of "liberalization" in regulated online gambling. A similar trend has played out in markets across Europe, with some countries imposing strict restrictions on gambling ads, for example. He pointed to US states like New York, New Jersey, and Illinois revisiting their gambling regulations, but said we've not yet seen efforts that have "dramatically redrawn the landscape."

"As this is a very universal dynamic for the industry, it's a very fair question to ask: How does the same trend play out in North America?" Kilsby said.

Some state regulators are also ratcheting up taxes on gambling and sports betting companies, as Kilsby and Grove pointed out. New Jersey's governor, for one, proposed hiking the tax rate for online gambling to 25%. Ohio's governor proposed doubling its tax rate on sports betting to 40%.

• Merch giant Fanatics is launching a stand-alone casino app as it expands its gambling business.
• The company is considered a challenger to gambling giants DraftKings and FanDuel.
• A Fanatics gaming exec shared what he says is the brand's "secret weapon."

Sports merch giant Fanatics is diving further into the gambling business by creating its own online casino.

On Friday, the company is launching a stand-alone casino app in four states as it expands beyond its bread-and-butter commerce and collectibles businesses. It's also rolling out a web version.

Fanatics entered the gambling fray a few years ago with sports betting and has been adding online casino games like slots, blackjack, and roulette. Its trajectory is familiar in the gambling world, where FanDuel, DraftKings, and others have moved from sports betting to online casinos.

The industry widely views Fanatics as a potential disruptor to FanDuel and DraftKings' market dominance, even as a latecomer to the US market, which has exploded since 2019.

It's competing not only with fantasy sports giants but also with casino brands with Vegas roots, such as BetMGM and Caesars Entertainment, and upstarts like Bet365 and ESPN Bet.

"We've got a big task on our hands," Conor Grant, president of gaming for Fanatics' betting and gaming arm, exclusively told Business Insider. "We're a challenger brand, but the owner of this company loves nothing more than a fight and to prove people wrong."

Fanatics has relied on its brand and database of over 100 million people who have bought jerseys, apparel, or other memorabilia for an edge. Grant called the company's loyalty program its "secret weapon." It gives Fanatics a direct line to potential bettors.

Grant said the casino player Fanatics is targeting now is a bit different from the traditional sports bettor, who is typically more male and mid-to-late 30s. Casino players tend to be female and late 30s or 40s.

However, the company said its database is diverse in terms of demographics and is roughly half men and half women, with a slight male skew.

"What is unique about Fanatics' position is that they have a good product, and they are able to reward people outside of just giving them promotional credits or money to play with," Macquarie analyst Chad Beynon said.

To plug the casino app, Fanatics is running a sweepstakes promotion in May and June to give away $2 million in FanCash. It can be redeemed for casino credits, bonus bets, or merch.

Fanatics said it doesn't have to spend a lot of money on TV ads like others because of its database, though Grant said it also plans to market the casino app on TV, through online ads, and through audio.

Can Fanatics disrupt the new gambling order?

As Fanatics expands its casino business, the gambling industry will be watching to see if it lives up to the hype.

Data from Eilers and Krejcik Gaming presented at a gambling conference in March showed that Fanatics made 2024 year-over-year market share gains in online sports betting and, to a lesser extent, in online casinos. Its growth outpaced challenger brands in the US like ESPN Bet and Bet365, but its overall market share doesn't measure up to established players led by FanDuel and DraftKings.

"At this point, I would say they're slightly below expectations," Beynon said of Fanatics. "I know originally, Michael Rubin had mentioned that he wants a top-three position in the space, which would kind of warrant 10% market share. They haven't been able to achieve that this year or any year so far."

Fanatics said its sportsbook is at or very close to that goal in states where it operates.

Grant said part of the reason Fanatics is launching the stand-alone casino app is to build awareness for the brand beyond sports.

"We want to be the preferred destination for slot players and the US casino players," Grant said. "We want to give them a really special experience with really compelling rewards and unrivaled loyalty."

Steven Ruddock, a gambling industry analyst and consultant, said Fanatics' biggest challenge and opportunity could be its ability to "not just peel off customers" from rivals but also win over new players who haven't gambled before.

So far, Fanatics has mainly focused on cross-selling casino games to sports bettors, who Grant said tend to be more into table games and live dealers. As such, table and live make up roughly two-thirds of the amount wagered on Fanatics' casino games, a metric known as handle, he said. Slots make up the rest.

The company expects that ratio to change with the new app and its growing focus on recreational slot players.

The casino app will include a mix of games, including slots, blackjack, roulette, jackpots, and video poker. It will have both licensed and original games.

Grant, who previously ran Flutter's business in the UK and Ireland, said he's been surprised by how price-sensitive US casino players are compared to those in Europe. He said the company needs to be "really clever and targeted" with whom it's going after.

He said his two biggest priorities for 2025 are establishing Fanatics Casino as a real alternative to the dominant market players in the states where it operates and making the loyalty program appealing to casino players.

"We're an entertainment business, and we want to really entertain customers when they come and they choose to invest their leisure time and their spend with us," Grant said. "We want to make sure we give them a good experience for that."

Darren Elias, a four-time World Poker Tour champion, rates poker scenes in movies and television for realism.

Elias breaks down the realism of Texas hold 'em games in movies, such as the high-stakes casino poker game in "Casino Royale," with Daniel Craig and Mads Mikkelsen; the underground poker scenes in "Rounders," starring Matt Damon; and "Molly's Game," with Jessica Chastain, Michael Cera, and Jeremy Strong. He looks at scenes featuring five-card draw as well as the basic rules of poker, such as explaining poker hand rankings and detecting tells in "John Wick: Chapter 4," with Keanu Reeves and Donnie Yen; and cheating scenes in "Ocean's Eleven," with Brad Pitt and George Clooney; and "The Sting," with Paul Newman and Robert Redford. He explains the realism of poker scenes in Western movies, such as the dead man's hand in "Ballad of Buster of Scruggs," with Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco, and Liam Neeson; and the saloon poker game in "Maverick," starring Mel Gibson and Jodi Foster. He also looks at the online poker scene in "The Simpsons" S24E4 (2012), the World Series of Poker tournament in "Lucky You," with Eric Bana and Robert Duvall, and blackjack card-counting scenes in "21."

Elias holds the record for most World Poker Tour titles, with four. He also participates in online poker tournaments, winning two World Championship of Online Poker titles and a Full Tilt Online Poker Series title. He has been BetMGM's poker ambassador since 2021.

You can follow Darren on X or read his online column.

Balatro is certainly habit-forming, but there's nothing to be won or lost, other than time, by playing it. While the game has you using standard playing cards and poker hands as part of its base mechanics, it does not have in-app purchases, loot boxes, or any kind of online play or enticement to gambling, beyond the basics of risk and reward.

Yet many YouTube creators had their Balatro videos set to the traffic-dropping "Age-restricted" status recently, allegedly due to "depictions or promotions of casino websites or apps," with little recourse for appeal.

A spokesperson for YouTube told Ars after this post was originally published that the videos should not be age-restricted, and that the service was "fixing the issue and conducting a platform-wide review."

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• Kalshi and Robinhood were handed cease-and-desists in New Jersey after taking trades on March Madness.
• The emerging world of sports predictions is facing pushback in the US.
• Gaming industry insiders say the outcome could have big implications for sports betting's future.

Sports prediction markets are under fire — and the outcome could be pivotal for the future of US sports betting.

Regulators in Nevada and New Jersey, two of the US's longest-standing gambling markets, sent cease-and-desist orders this month to the futures trading platform Kalshi to stop it from taking trades on sports events. Fintech platform Robinhood, which uses Kalshi's platform to offer sports contracts, also got a cease-and-desist letter in New Jersey, and Massachusetts is investigating the company's sports contracts.

More states seem to be following suit. On Monday, an Ohio regulator said it issued cease-and-desist notices over sports contracts to Kalshi, Robinhood, and Crypto.com.

"We have been targeted before, we have fought before, and we have won before," CEO Tarek Mansour said in a statement to Business Insider. "This time will be no different."

A Robinhood spokesperson also said in a statement that the company doesn't think "these contracts run afoul of any state laws." Robinhood pulled its March Madness contracts from New Jersey, though.

Prediction markets have surged in popularity since the 2024 US presidential election and companies including Kalshi and Crypto.com have expanded into sports events. Sports predictions are similar to betting in that users can put money on the outcome of a game, but those contracts can be traded and typically only include whether a team will win or lose (rather than on player stats or parlays).

Kalshi has driven over $320 million in trading volume on the outcome of the men's March Madness championship alone, according to its website. March Madness is one of the biggest US sports betting events of the year.

While sports gambling is limited to the 39 US jurisdictions where it's been legalized and regulated, sports predictions from Kalshi are being offered in all 50 states. Sports predictions are a major threat — and opportunity — for betting operators, some of which have expressed interest in predictions and are likely watching closely to see how Kalshi's regulatory battle plays out.

"This is a historical legal battle that pits states' traditional authority over gaming and sports betting against whether commodities exchanges regulated by the [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] can include sports betting-like offerings," said James Kilsby, chief analyst at Vixio, a regulatory tech company that works with the gambling industry.

All eyes are on Kalshi

Kalshi has sued regulators in Nevada and New Jersey in response to the cease-and-desists. The company argued, in part, that Kalshi is a "federally regulated exchange" overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has the sole authority to approve or reject its events contracts, per a March 28 court filing.

It described the ways its sports contracts differ from betting, including that they "do not reflect a 'bet' against the 'house.'" (Contrary to that point, some states' sports betting laws cover peer-to-peer betting.)

Ultimately, Kalshi argues that shutting down in Nevada and New Jersey could violate CFTC rules that its events contracts be open, fair, and accessible.

If the courts and the CFTC decide Kalshi's sports contracts are legitimate, it could "trigger a significant reaction from the sports betting industry," Kilsby said.

"It's almost impossible to imagine a scenario in which FanDuel and DraftKings don't ultimately want to move into that market as well," he said. "I think you'll very quickly see more companies positioning themselves to launch sports exchange platforms under the CFTC guidelines."

That said, the legal and regulatory saga will likely last several months, and other hurdles could emerge, legal, regulatory, and gambling insiders told BI.

"The sports wagering industry is looking at this very carefully, and they're trying to decide," said Andrew Kim, an appellate and gaming litigator at Goodwin. "They have a balancing act right now of not offending the regulators that oversee their prime product but also not missing out on an opportunity to jump to the kind of innovative gray areas that really formed [daily fantasy sports] and all the other sports wagering industries to begin with. "

More states could oppose sports predictions, as could tribal groups with the authority to conduct gaming on many lands and exclusivity with some states.

Gaming industry consultant Dustin Gouker, who broke the news about the New Jersey cease-and-desists through his Closing Line newsletter, said the letters could be a "bellwether of what's going to happen next."

Sports predictions threaten revenue for states like Nevada and New Jersey. New Jersey, which led the expansion of legal sports betting in the US by appealing a federal ban, brought in over $1 million in sports wagering revenue in January, making it the third largest US market, according to the American Gaming Association.

The issue also undermines states' control over what constitutes sports betting within their borders and what they do and do not allow. The matter could eventually end up at the Supreme Court, depending on where the lower courts and the CFTC land.

And it's hard to ignore that this battle over the states' rights to regulate sports betting is coming at a key moment for the industry: March Madness.

In its cease-and-desist letters, New Jersey's Division of Gaming Enforcement pointed to the state's restrictions on betting on college sports. The state prohibits betting on college games that take place in the state or involve local teams like Rutgers.

"Other states are looking to what happens here, and whether they're successful, and how Kalshi and Robinhood respond," Gouker said.

March 31, 2025: This story was updated to reflect additional details.

• Preeya Khanna was central to YouTube's creator strategy for more than a decade.
• Now, she's entering entrepreneurship, while remaining in the corporate world.
• Khanna is joining forces with her brother on a creator-focused iGaming startup.

The YouTube exec in charge of working with top creators, Preeya Khanna, is hanging up her "golden handcuffs" after 12 years at the company.

"I was really craving a return back to what it felt like in the earlier days to just build something," she said. "I had never taken my knowledge and applied it elsewhere."

The creator economy vet is entering the entrepreneurial fray as an advisor to Hype.bet, a creator-focused iGaming startup founded by her younger brother.

Khanna will harness her expertise to onboard creators for the online gambling platform — building selection criteria and lead lists, as she did during her tenure at YouTube — as Hype.bet seeks to cultivate a more social user experience.

Khanna's career at YouTube began at 24 as an intern. In her first full-time role as partner manager for breakout creators like Tyler Oakley and Bethany Mota, she saw the legitimacy of the early creator economy crystallize, taking creators to Times Square to see the billboards YouTube had erected in their honor.

Over the years she advanced from an intern to the manager of a sizable team she said she still speaks with regularly. Last January, Khanna was named global head of top creators, celebrities, and athletes — essentially managing the team she started on — and working with the likes of MrBeast, Brittany Broski, and Druski.

"It just started feeling a little bit of what's old is new again," she said of her culminating role. "I was ready to leave and get in on something closer to the ground floor — to really be able to shape it."

She's also remaining in the corporate world, having separately taken on a role at Airbnb as director of experience supply, working on the company's experiences business.

Mixing family and business

Khanna's brother, Shayne, said he'd long admired his sister's career.

"I used to ask her, 'What did they put in your water?'" he said.

Shayne was in the midst of his own career transition, having founded the online gambling-focused investment firm S2 Growth.

While fielding deals, Shayne and his business partner discovered Hype.bet — a platform that enables creators to host virtual rooms where they can gamble with followers.

They believed in the idea so strongly that they purchased a 50% stake in the company and began incubating it as co-CEOS, with backing from Yolo Investments and Benjie Cherniak.

Shayne said Hype.bet's creator bent epitomizes a wave of platforms seeking a more human feeling. And he likened Preeya's involvement to "having someone who has the exact playbook at the highest level in our back pocket."

At Hype.bet, Preeya said the team is seeking creators with long-form livestreaming experience and a knack for depth — and who are comfortable in the online gambling space, which is regulated differently around the world. Hype.bet itself is based in Canada and does not operate in the US.

Preeya said mentors at YouTube like Susan Wojcicki, Robert Kyncl, and Neal Mohan had instilled a creator-first mentality that informs her approach.

"Creators know so much more than we do about how products will land in-market, about their audiences, and how to mobilize them," she said.

Initially, Shayne said there was some trepidation about asking his sister to join Hype.bet, knowing the rate at which startups fail. But while there's still room for sibling friction, it's been a smooth transition.

"I think he respects the space that I know, and I fully respect the space that he knows," Preeya said.

• We went to a gambling conference to check the vibes in the industry.
• Prediction markets and sweepstakes are creating competition, and the space is facing regulatory pushback.
• Industry insiders discussed challenger brands, AI, crypto, tariffs, and more.

A battle is brewing between the titans of the US gambling industry and challenger brands pioneering areas like sweepstakes, predictions markets, and new daily fantasy models.

We recently attended Next.io's Next Summit in New York to check the vibes from its roughly 1,000 gambling industry investors, entrepreneurs, and executives. This year, tensions between the big betting companies and disrupters surfaced on panels and in talks among insiders.

Emerging formats like prediction markets are gaining traction in the US and are regulated differently from sports betting and online gambling. In some cases, that means they can reach a wider audience, creating a threat — or opportunity — for gambling companies.

Prediction markets from Crypto.com, Kalshi, and Polymarket, for example, are legal in all 50 US states. These companies recently started offering contracts on sports. People buy "yes" or "no" on outcomes, like whether Duke will win the March Madness men's tournament. There are no money lines, point spreads, or parlays. Still, sports predictions function a lot like online sports betting, which is only legal in 33 states.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is reviewing sports prediction markets and could still shut them down, but a nationwide version of sports betting could change the industry's dynamics. Prediction markets are regulated at the federal level, while gambling is a state issue.

"The CFTC-mediated sports prediction markets could really upend that dynamic," investor Chris Grove, cofounder and general partner of Acies Investments, said at the event.

Grove thinks gambling operators could consider pushing into predictions. He also said that by the end of the year, if apps like Kalshi are still in sports, they could evolve to offer full-game parlays, making them even more like sports betting.

"I don't think prediction markets are going to change everything, but I think they will threaten to change a lot of things, and being ignorant to those threats is probably the biggest risk for everyone in this room," Grove said.

Sports predictions and other emerging categories, such as sweepstakes that are free to enter and pick 'em fantasy sports that riff on gambling's parlay model with picks on a selection of player stats, were big themes at the conference — as were AI, crypto gaming, M&A, and the impact of the Trump administration and tariffs.

Here were the topics insiders were buzzing about at the conference:

AI is disrupting gambling

AI was one of the biggest themes, including how potential bettors and gambling companies use it.

AI-powered searches can take traffic from Google and other search engines where gambling companies acquire users. Grove said during his presentation that AI is "disrupting" that model.

"The operators who are fastest to learn how to optimize the AI-driven search landscape are likely to realize substantial consumer and margin gains," Grove said. "I think we could see a reshaping of market share in the process."

AI could also be used in online games. Justin Park, the CEO of Canada-based online slots company Betty, said AI could be used to develop new slot experiences since they use random number generators.

Microsoft had a big presence at the conference with a panel on how to use generative AI in games through Microsoft Muse.

Warren Cho, Microsoft's worldwide gaming vertical leader, said his previous manager had an "allergic reaction" when he said he wanted to work with gambling companies. But the US tech giant has since expanded its work with brands in Europe, where sports betting is "part of the culture," and is looking to do more in regulated markets.

Sweepstakes ruffle feathers

There's a particularly fierce lobbying war surrounding sweepstakes. They resemble online casino games but are free to play and typically have a freemium model where users buy and bet digital coins.

Grove and others said online gambling operators had been trying to "tamp down" competition from sweepstakes.

The category has faced regulatory pushback similar to what pick- 'em fantasy encountered a few years ago, with states like New York looking to ban it.

Erik Nyman, president of Americas for supplier EveryMatrix, said in one session that vendors need to "pick a side" between gambling and sweepstakes in markets where the latter is unregulated.

But these sweepstakes companies are also amassing war chests they could use to fight back as they make more money.

"This is the United States, legislation gets put forth by people who are well organized and who have money and lobbyists and interest, and legislation is successfully opposed in the exact same way," said Bill Gantz, a partner at Duane Morris LLP who has been involved in social casino litigation.

Categories like sweepstakes have become a sore spot as the expansion of online casino legislation has all but ground to a halt, and some lawmakers have sought to rein in sports betting. Still, some insiders think sweepstakes could make lawmakers more comfortable with gambling in the long run since these games are free to enter.

"Social sweepstakes is an answer to the online casino legislation logjam," Grove said.

Crypto is back

Crypto gaming was hot.

And then it wasn't.

It seems to be back again this year.

Investors on an M&A panel predicted a crypto exchange or retail trading app could buy a betting company. Roger Ehrenberg at Eberg Capital said crypto was a "complete unlock" for the gambling industry.

The vibes are not good between the US and Canada

Uncertainty around tariffs and inflation has dragged down the stock market this month.

But perhaps the biggest hit to the US gambling industry so far has come from our neighbors to the North.

Relationships between some US and Canadian gambling companies appear to be souring in the fallout of Trump's tariff policy and 51st-state remarks. Leaders in key Canadian markets with legal gambling, including Ontario and British Columbia, have called for retaliatory measures on US businesses.

Two gambling insiders told BI that in response, some Canadian companies are canceling contracts with US companies. Canadian customers are also boycotting US betting brands and looking to homegrown alternatives.

"We're not going to take it lying down," said Paul Burns, President and CEO of the Canadian Gaming Association, of President Donald Trump's recent Canada comments.

Despite the tensions and overall economic uncertainty, the broader outlook among gambling companies was relatively rosy.

Investors at Next Summit predicted an uptick in M&A in the next 12 to 24 months.

Insiders on the ground talked up nascent areas that could benefit from the Trump administration's policies, such as crypto gambling and prediction markets. And the trade group, the American Gaming Association, pointed to Trump's experience in the gambling business. President and CEO Bill Miller called Trump a "casino guy" who has always treated the industry fairly.

Entertainment and social could grow the industry

Gambling is positioning itself as entertainment, and companies are borrowing tactics from Hollywood and social media. Insiders drew several comparisons to Netflix, including DraftKings' chief product officer Corey Gottlieb who said onstage that his team modeled its casino app after the streamer's user experience.

Betr, a sports media and betting company cofounded by influencer Jake Paul and entrepreneur Joey Levy, has podcasts with high-profile influencers like "Hawk Tuah Girl" Haliey Welch. The company said it'd love to do a deal with YouTube's biggest star, MrBeast.

Edward King, cofounding partner and co-chief investment officer of Acies Investments, added there's a big opportunity for entrepreneurs.

"This should be viewed as an entertainment industry, and what is it you could do to bring that person in?" he said. "And if you do that then the industry is going to increase in size by about fivefold."

• FanDuel is launching a new show about gambling addiction, called "The Comeback with Craig Carton."
• The show will feature guests who will talk about their struggles with sports betting.
• A FanDuel exec said the strategy makes "perfect sense" for the gambling brand.

FanDuel, a major US gambling operator, is launching a new show about the problems with gambling.

The monthly show, called "The Comeback with Craig Carton," features people who have openly battled gambling addiction and includes tools and resources for help. Its first episode speaks with former NBA player Randy Livingston and his wife about his struggles with gambling. The series airs on FanDuel's YouTube channel and streaming network, FanDuel TV Extra.

Legal sports betting has faced media criticism and regulatory pushback in the US amid high-profile gambling scandals. Some lawmakers are pushing for legislation such as the SAFE Bet Act, which targets sports betting-related "public health issues" with new regulations around practices like advertising.

The new series shows FanDuel is trying to own the narrative around gambling addiction and responsible gambling.

Cory Fox, the senior vice president of public policy and sustainability, told Business Insider the show fits perfectly into its "multipronged approach to responsible gambling."

FanDuel, for example, offers a responsible gambling landing page with tools and resources for users who seek help. The company is also trying to create a culture of responsible gaming. FanDuel and other major gambling operators launched last year the Responsible Online Gambling Association, as well.

Carton, the show's host, told BI there is a stigma surrounding gambling addiction that he hopes the show can shed and encourage more people to seek help. He is a recovering gambling addict turned advocate who started working with FanDuel in 2021 to promote responsible gambling.

Carton said he wants to use FanDuel's reach to "help people, warn people, and show people the signs of problem gambling."

Why would a gambling brand have a show about the bad parts of gambling?

It seems ironic that one of the largest gambling platforms in the US is centering a show around the harmful parts of its industry.

Fox said the reality is that some of FanDuel's customers may experience gambling addiction, so the company wants them to see what it looks like.

"I think actually doing it on a gambling network makes a lot of sense," he said.

Host Carton had a radio show about responsible gambling before partnering with FanDuel.

"The purpose of this show is to let people see the depth that irresponsible, compulsive gamblers go to so that they can continue to wager the things that they risk," said Carton. "And then on the flip side, a lot of the people that we're going to talk to have also successfully navigated recovery."

• DraftKings is expanding original games for its online casino.
• It's modeling the user experience after Netflix and the way it delivers recommendations.
• DraftKings' online casino business grew 21% year over year in the fourth quarter.

DraftKings is modeling its online casino experience after Netflix as it expands its focus on original games.

Chief Product Officer Corey Gottlieb said Netflix's content recommendations inspired his team at DraftKings. He spoke in March at Next.io's Next Summit, a gambling conference in New York.

Netflix's app is known for surfacing shows and movies based on what users have watched, grouping titles in unique categories, and putting highlights, like new releases or Christmas movies around the holidays, at the top of the homepage.

Swiping through DraftKings' casino app, users can similarly find "lobbies" with carousels of games. They include the top 10 slots or table games, titles that are "only at DraftKings," recently played games, suggested games for a particular user, and games grouped by themes like "spin the wheel." The app even has an "Easter Hunt" section right now with spring-themed games like "Charmed Rabbits" and "Celtic Gold."

"It was really modeled after Netflix from a content delivery perspective," Gottlieb said. "This next-gen lobby product we've created essentially allows our operators to manage dozens of lobbies concurrently with one another, and every lobby is themed."

Gottlieb said there are also lobbies tailored for different types of bettors like VIPs and casual gamers.

The Netflix model is part of DraftKings' merchandising strategy, one of three pillars of its product plan that also includes in-house content and gamification.

DraftKings has doubled down on original content to propel its casino business. Gottlieb said the company now produces 110 original titles through its casino studio, which made up about half of the amount wagered on its casino games last year, a metric known as handle. That was out of the thousands of games it offers.

While online casino gambling is legal in a small portion of the US, the business is key to DraftKings' future because of its growth potential. DraftKings acquired Golden Nugget Online Gaming and software company Blue Ribbon a few years ago to pave its entry into the space. It's also bet on adjacent areas like digital lottery through the purchase of Jackpocket.

DraftKings' revenue from its online casino, referred to as igaming, grew about 21% year over year in the fourth quarter to $426 million, according to a financial presentation. Overall revenue for the period was up 13% year over year.

DraftKings is developing more of its own games and betting markets

Gottlieb said producing in-house content is part of a larger plan to create more originals across its business, including the sportsbook.

It's creating more of its own bets, rather than relying on third parties for live betting or same-game parlays on different outcomes within a game.

"We have made a major investment both in bringing new content to market," and in "bringing that content in-house," Gottlieb said, referring to betting markets.

He said this gives DraftKings more control over areas like pricing and the types of bets it offers, helping the company stand out in a "very redundant" marketplace.

Gottlieb said that by the end of 2025, all DraftKings' live and in-game betting content will be in-house.

"The goal for us initially was, how do we just sort of reduce a third-party dependency, create some cost savings?" Gottlieb said. "And what we sort of found our way into was a fully functional end-to-end studio with everything from game development to in-house."

• A British woman has won a legal case against a bookmaker over an unpaid million-dollar prize.
• Corrine Durber initially won a $1.4 million jackpot but was later paid a lower prize of $26,000.
• She took gambling firm Paddy Power to court and this week was awarded the full prize money.

A woman from the UK who was told on a gambling game that she had won over $1.4 million but was only given $26,000 has won a legal challenge against the betting firm.

In October 2020, Corrine Durber placed a bet on the online platform of Irish gambling firm Paddy Power. The game, Wild Hatter, was a combination of fruit machine reels and a wheel of fortune, documents from the court case said.

Durber, who lives in Gloucestershire in southwest England, said she was playing the game on her iPad when she won a jackpot prize in its first stage and was moved to the next level. Per court documents, she was then asked to spin the jackpot wheel.

After clicking the "spin" button, Durber was informed she had won the "Monster Jackpot" of £1,097,132 ($1,416,000).

Instead, she was paid £20,265 ($26,160) by Paddy Power, the amount due if Durber had won the "Daily Jackpot" instead. The case, which reached the UK's High Court, said that no explanation was provided for why the sum changed to a much smaller figure.

Durber complained to the gambling company on the same evening she won, the case said. At the time, Paddy Power said the computer system that ran the game had made a mistake and displayed an incorrect figure.

Paddy Power said she should have won a "Daily Jackpot," but because of the programming issue, the "Monster System" segment lit up.

Durber sued PPB Entertainment, which trades as Paddy Power and Betfair, for the money she was due under the terms of a consumer contract and breach of contract.

In his ruling earlier this week, High Court judge Justice Andrew Ritchie said: "When a trader puts all the risk on a consumer for its own recklessness, negligence, errors, inadequate digital services and inadequate testing, that appears onerous to me."

Speaking to PA Media after the decision, Durber said: "As you can imagine, I'm so relieved and happy that the judge has confirmed I fairly and squarely won £1 million from Paddy Power."

"I will never bet with them ever again," she said.

Flutter UKI, which owns Paddy Power, told Business Insider in a statement: "Every week, tens of thousands of customers win with Paddy Power, including an individual who received a £5.7m jackpot just one year ago.

"We always strive to provide the best customer experience possible and pride ourselves on fairness. We deeply regret this unfortunate case and are reviewing the judgment."

• This NFL season has been bad for sportsbooks, mostly because gamblers kept winning.
• Betting favorites largely came out on top during the season.
• In Super Bowl 2025, an Eagles win against the Chiefs in a high-scoring game could hit sportsbooks' revenue.

Americans are expected to legally bet $1.4 billion on the Super Bowl this year, but the game might not be a windfall for sports-betting companies.

This NFL season was pretty bad for sportsbooks, mostly because gamblers kept winning. Betting favorites largely came out on top during the season, particularly in December.

Casual bettors tend to put their money on the favorites, so sports betting companies had to pay out.

"When favorites win, the public usually wins," Chad Beynon, senior analyst at Macquarie, told Business Insider. "So in December, a lot of people won money."

Take the final "Monday Night Football" game of the season between the Detroit Lions and the San Francisco 49ers. The Lions were favorites to win in almost every bet on the December 30 game, analysts at MoffettNathanson pointed out. Win they did. The final score of 40-34 also covered both bets on the 3.5-point spread and the over of 50.5 total points in the game, per MoffettNathanson.

"This MNF game is one of the most glaring examples of unfavorable sports outcomes, with almost every prop bet along with the game lines of the Lions as favorites and the over on total points all hitting," MoffettNathanson wrote in a January report.

FanDuel owner Flutter said on January 7 that it expected US revenue for 2024 to be about $370 million lower because of this "period of very unfavorable US sports results."

"The 2024/2025 NFL season to date has been the most customer friendly since the launch of online sports betting with the highest rate of favorites winning in nearly 20 years," Flutter wrote in the announcement.

Some analysts, including Macquarie, also lowered their financial forecasts for publicly traded sports betting operators due to the very bad month.

The Eagles are favorites to win the Super Bowl

So, what does all this mean for the Super Bowl?

The Super Bowl is the most bet-on event of the year. It accounts for nearly 1% of the annual amount wagered in the industry, known as handle, according to estimates from the gambling industry research firm Eilers and Krejcik Gaming.

Nearly 80% of DraftKings Super Bowl bettors are expecting it to be a high-scoring game with over 48.5 points. And they're leaning toward the Philadelphia Eagles to beat the Kansas City Chiefs, with 55% betting on an Eagles win. That's per DraftKings as of Thursday afternoon.

"A bad outcome would be lots of points and the Eagles winning," Beynon explained.

If the Eagles win in a high-scoring game, there are also lots of other proposition bets — will Travis Kelce score a touchdown? Will Jalen Hurts throw for 250 yards? — that could compound how "bad" the outcome actually is for US sportsbooks.

Betting operators are also hoping for an exciting game that people will stay engaged in. With in-play betting, people can place bets into the fourth quarter.

"You want an entertaining game," Beynon said. "You want people to tune in until the end."

The best-case scenario for sportsbooks as of now is a Chiefs win with under a 48-point total score.

That said, the Super Bowl is a huge opportunity — the biggest opportunity of the year — for sports betting to bring in casual bettors and try to keep them around. Sportsbooks are investing in marketing and promotions around the game. FanDuel, for example, is running a TV ad.

To that end, it's not a long-term threat to the business for gamblers to win every once in a while.

• Novelty prop bets around the Super Bowl are centering on Taylor Swift this year.
• Many of these bets are on unregulated sites since it's generally not legal to offer them in the US.
• Legal US betting apps are getting in on the action in other ways, including with "Swiftie Specials."

Will Travis Kelce propose to Taylor Swift on the field after the Super Bowl? Will Swift take the stage during halftime?

With the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl and Swift expected to be in the audience, many novelty prop bets this year are centering on the megastar. Gamblers are betting on everything from how many times Swift will appear during the broadcast to what she'll wear.

These bets are happening, for the most part, on offshore platforms — sites like Bovada and BetOnline — that are unregulated and can't operate legally in the US.

While sports betting is legal in more than 30 US states, regulators have strict rules on what Americans can wager on. Prop bets — or wagers on outcomes other than who will win or lose a game — are generally limited to the action in a sporting event and events with definitive outcomes. The limitations vary by state.

But legal gambling operators in the US don't want to miss out entirely. While they can't craft bets around Swift's actions, they're trying to pull her into prop bets focused on star players.

DraftKings, for instance, has a menu of over 30 "Swiftie Specials." These are typical prop bets but named after Swift songs. They include the "Shake It Off," which has the Philadelphia Eagles scoring first and the Chiefs to win. The "Mine" bets Kelce will get 87 or more receiving yards and score one or more touchdowns. The "I Knew You Were Trouble" wagers that the Eagles running back Saquon Barkley will get 250 or more rush and receiving yards. And the "Deja Vu" has the Chiefs winning by exactly 3 points. (While the song is sung by Olivia Rodrigo, Swift has a cowriting credit.)

"We're seeing a lot of interest on the Taylor Swift-related special, so we're very excited to roll those out," DraftKings' chief marketing officer, Stephanie Sherman, told Business Insider.

The betting operator Bet365 has similar offerings, including the "1989" on Kelce to have a reception for 19 or more yards and 89 or more receiving yards, as well as the "22" on the Chiefs tight end to hit a record 22-plus receiving yards in each half.

In North American markets like Ontario, where the restrictions are a little more lax, operators like FanDuel and BetMGM legally can — and are — offering bets on whether Kelce will propose on the field.

"If there's an opportunity to leverage her fame and her involvement with Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs and her being at the game and being part of the broadcast, I think people are going to try to pull this off," Jason Logan, a senior analyst at the gambling affiliate site Covers.com, told BI.

Why you can't legally bet on a Kelce-Swift proposal in the US

The restrictions against many types of prop bets in the US are largely set up to prevent markets from being manipulated. For example, members of Swift's inner circle might be privy to what the artist plans to wear to the game.

"That's the nightmare scenario for gaming control boards," Logan said. "Someone knows that information and can leverage it to manipulate the markets."

That's why legal operators like DraftKings or FanDuel can't offer bets in the US on whether Swift will appear onstage with Kendrick Lamar during halftime, for example.

Swift isn't the sole focus of this Super Bowl's novelty prop bets. Gambling operators are also taking wagers in some US states on the coin toss, which is related to the action in a game and has a definitive outcome. Other novelty bets available legally in places like Ontario — and offered by some offshore sites — include how long the national anthem will run and the color of the Gatorade bath.

The American Gaming Association estimates that Americans will wager a record $1.4 billion legally on Super Bowl LIX. Some analysts have pegged the figure even higher, at about $1.7 billion.

With that much at stake, it's easy to see why companies like DraftKings are chasing Swifties this year. The star has helped bring in a new fan base for the NFL since she began dating Kelce and showing up to support him at games. Last year, a 24% spike in 18- to 24-year-old women viewers helped drive a record 123.7 million average viewers for the Super Bowl, Sportico reported, citing Nielsen data.

Betting apps want a piece of that pie.

"They're trying to leverage that interest, the cross-the-aisle interest, bringing in fans that might not be big football fans," Logan said.

If you are betting on the California wildfires, I don't know what to tell you. Go outside (if it's safe). Do some reflecting. Call a gambling-addiction hotline, probably. Though I suppose the impulse to wager on destruction isn't all bettors' fault — gambling companies have people right where they want them, placing wagers on things most of us never would have imagined just a few years ago. We're days into the new year, and it already feels like the gambling boom has gone too far.

In case you missed it, the prediction market Polymarket is letting people place bets on aspects of the fires that have ravaged the Los Angeles area. The platform set various markets for questions like how long it would take the first fire to be contained, how fast the various blazes would burn, and where they would spread.

The cryptocurrency-based market — which is off-limits for American gamblers, though some try to circumvent it with a VPN — seemed to recognize that this might not go over well. In a disclaimer on the site, Polymarket says the point of its prediction markets is to "harness the wisdom of the crowd to create accurate, unbiased forecasts for the most important events impacting society." The "devastating" fires were one such event in which Polymarket said it could "yield invaluable real-time answers to those directly impacted in ways traditional media cannot." In other words, if you want to know whether your house is about to burn down, check what a group of anonymous gamblers outside the US think — hopefully in addition to the news and local authorities and, you know, your own eyes.

The idea of bettors trying to make a quick buck when lives and livelihoods are at stake is morally fraught. It's also a sign of the times: Gambling is becoming increasingly common, and in the process, the lines around what's appropriate, logical, and ethical are becoming increasingly murky. If 2024 was the year we asked whether gambling culture in the US had gone too far, 2025 might be the year we get an answer.

It's tempting to look down on gamblers who take things too far, depending on your tolerance for that kind of stuff. But the problem with blaming individuals for getting in over their heads is that you miss the forest for the trees. Betting platforms and the gambling industry are designed to suck customers in and get them to bet at higher rates and in different ways.

While Polymarket may be operating in a bit of a gray area, even the formal, highly regulated platforms in the US are enticing people to develop a deeper relationship with betting. Businesses want to cross-sell — once Caesars gets you into its sports-betting pipeline, it would very much like to direct you to the casino. DraftKings is launching a subscription service that draws in bettors with the possibility of making extra money on super-long-shot bets. Delta Air Lines also recently announced a partnership with the sportsbook that could integrate its offerings or its branding into the gaming options on airplane seatbacks, though the details are vague. These innovations don't rival something as clearly problematic as betting on fires, but they show that gambling companies are succeeding at getting into more nooks and crannies of society.

In a statement to Business Insider, a DraftKings spokesperson said that the sports betting industry is "rigorously regulated" and that the company operates in "strict compliance" with the regulations of every jurisdiction it's in. "Equating DraftKings with unregulated prediction markets — particularly those that fall outside the scope of US regulation — is not only an egregious misrepresentation but also an insult to the integrity of regulators and responsible, law-abiding operators," the spokesperson said.

It's impossible to ignore the recent cultural shift when it comes to gambling. After decades of operating in the shadows, sports gambling is everywhere: Americans are thought to have wagered some $150 billion on sports in 2024, up from about $120 billion in 2023, and ads for gambling are almost inescapable during sporting events in many parts of the country. Beyond sports, some operators, including Robinhood, offer betting on things like elections. Polymarket's bread and butter may be elections, but it's also letting people wager on whether we'll see a new pandemic in 2025 or whether Israel and Hamas will agree to a cease-fire. People are even treating areas that are nominally not gambling, like the stock market, crypto, and even restaurant reservations, as if they're a casino. However you feel about gambling — maybe you're OK with it, maybe you think it's evil — the speed with which the lines around it are moving can make your head spin.

A spokesperson for Polymarket told me that the company didn't generate fees or revenue from the fire-related markets (or any of its markets) and described the markets as "a way to distinguish the signal from the noise in a news environment starved of quantitative data." They added: "These markets address the same questions being discussed across all of cable news and X. We've proven that markets can be an invaluable alternative information source for those seeking real-time quantitative data."

The fire-related markets are small — the largest one, about how many acres will burn, had about $275,000 in it on Friday afternoon. For comparison, more than $400 million has been bet on who will be inaugurated as US president on January 20. Why do this at all then? The smaller the prediction market, meaning the less money bet on it, the less the wisdom-of-the-crowd idea holds. That flies in the face of the argument that this is some noble endeavor to get information — it's just a handful of incredibly online gawkers betting on the outcome of an event that is devastating for thousands of people.

The pervasiveness of betting — both in what you can gamble on and where you can gamble — is changing our relationship with it. In a 2024 survey of US adults by the American Gaming Association, 55% of respondents said they had participated in some sort of gambling over the past year, up from 49% the year before. And Gallup surveys suggest a healthy majority of Americans see gambling as morally acceptable. At the extreme, the gambling industry envisions a future where people will bet on everything and will be able to create markets for anything. Perhaps someday you'll be able to create a mini-market for people to bet on whether it will rain on your wedding day. On the one hand, whatever, maybe that's just an extra bit of fun to make the day more exciting. On the other hand, you could just check the weather and otherwise enjoy your wedding without making it into a money-making event for random people on the internet. Plenty of people are able to enjoy watching sports sans gambling as well, even as the sportsbooks spend a lot of money to convince people that betting really ups the fun quotient.

There are going to be a lot of "tipping point" moments for gambling in the months and years to come. For a lot of people, betting is a newfangled way to find some enjoyment and spice up life. But finding where the boundaries are — socially and legally — is a critical process where there aren't easy, straightforward answers. When we can bet on more and more things in more and more places, it's fair to ask: Just how far do we want gambling to go?

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Narrativa is among a crop of startups seizing on the artificial intelligence boom to enthusiastically automate writing tasks that would once have fallen to humans. From penning regulatory documentation for Pfizer to zhuzhing up marketing copy for insurance and e-commerce firms and helping generate breaking news articles for The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles-based Narrativa boasts roughly 50 clients in various industries. But one of its core focus areas, comprising a quarter of its business, is a little more polarizing than the rest: gambling.

Working with major industry players like 888 and Betway, Narrativa uses large language models to pump out everything from automated summaries of sports games to SEO-friendly reviews of online casino games and promotional social media posts. With no humans required, the 20-person company's AI tools produce 10 million words a month for gambling clients — the effective output of 170-odd full-time writers producing a grueling 3,000 words a day. It's all in service of enticing gamblers to place more bets.

"You want to create a community, you want people coming back for more," Matthew Rector, Narrativa's vice president of content, says. "You want to foster that environment, and our content helps facilitate that."

Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, and the tech industry's other top impresarios talk a big game about how AI may one day attain sentience, solve the climate crisis, and lead society to a post-scarcity economy. Today, though, the technology is being embraced by traditional industries for more prosaic — and mercenary — aims. Key among them is the gambling industry, which is rapidly adopting AI for everything from writing alluring online marketing copy to identifying and helping problem gamblers to tracking people and perfecting the physical layout of casinos.

The ultimate goal: to harvest ever more money from gamblers, by profiling them, feeding them content and games personalized to their whims, and cajoling them to stay longer and make bigger bets.

The gambling industry, much like AI, is in the middle of an unprecedented gold rush. In 2018, a US Supreme Court ruling allowed states to legalize sports betting; nearly 40 states since did exactly that. Major investments have since flooded in, with some gambling stocks hitting record highs and private-equity firms jumping into multibillion-dollar deals with gambling and casino companies.

Meanwhile, consumers' wallets have been emptying: Americans bet a record $120 billion in 2023, according to the American Gaming Association. A study by California researchers released in 2024 estimated that legalized gambling across America may result in as many as 30,000 bankruptcies and an additional $8 billion in debt collections each year. Another paper out of Kansas found that average household investments in the stock market dropped in states where gambling was legalized by roughly $50 per quarter. (In Brazil, which legalized online gambling in 2018, as much as one-fifth of welfare money is now spent directly on gambling, the AP reported in November.)

Under the hood, artificial intelligence is helping power this surge.

Several online betting platforms, for example, offer "micro bets," which allow gamblers to bet in real time throughout the game — who gets the next touchdown or makes the next tackle, whether the next play will be a run or a pass. AI companies like SimpleBet (recently acquired by DraftKings for $195 million) have automated processes that allow the maximum number of possible micro bets to increase by an order of magnitude. No longer bottlenecked by the capabilities of human sportsbook odds calculators, every moment of a sports game can be turned into a wager. Won your bet that Lamar Jackson would throw on 2nd and 10? Why not bet again that he'll scramble for the first down on 3rd and 3?

Physical casinos are also looking to harness AI for efficiency gains. nQube, a Canadian startup run by a physics professor, uses machine learning to optimize the placement of slot machines on casino floors, profiling players and the performance of one-armed bandits individually and collectively — replacing an older generation of floor-manager intuition and basic analysis. Some of nQube's findings have been counterintuitive: It turns out that removing the total number of slot machines can often increase the casino's "win," if the machines are arranged in a way that redirects players to games where they'll make larger bets.

Jason Feige, a cofounder of nQube, had been working on computational astrophysics when his partner, Stasi Baran, found a scientific paper about the problem of optimal casino floor planning. Though neither had any gaming experience, they both realized their work could be a fit. "I like math and I like hard problems, and she brought me just a monster of a problem and I just fell in love with it," Feige says. "I have never seen data as clean and as comprehensive as what you see in this industry, largely because it is so heavily regulated. But that combined with the kind of powerful AI systems that I've been building, it was just such a natural fit. I just absolutely fell in love with the industry."

The prospect of deeper AI integration is definitely in the air. At one of the gambling industry's biggest events, G2E, a glitzy conference held in Las Vegas in September, there were packed panels on AI in sports betting, women in AI, AI-powered behavioral analytics and "responsible gambling," and AI for customer relationships.

One of the most enticing, and controversial, uses of AI in gambling is customizing casinos — virtual and on the floor — to each gambler.

Just as Netflix uses machine learning and data science to tailor each user's feed to what they're most likely to binge, the startup Future Anthem uses similar tools to keep users hooked on casino websites. The UK-based software provider builds a personalized, dynamic homepage, presenting the exact right game — bingo, slots, poker — to cater to a player's desires at the exact right moment, offering bonuses if the player is getting dejected and keeping them betting for longer.

"We have machine-learning models that are understanding and humanizing that player, that player data," says Ian Tibot, Future Anthem's chief commercial officer. "We see every single spin of a slot, we see every single bet, and we actually understand the experience that the player is having by creating the concept of a session out of that data, and that allows us to understand changes in patterns of behavior."

Brick-and-mortar casinos are also digitally profiling their users. Some locations have RFID chips embedded in every gambling chip, tracking how each gambler is playing and building a profile that automatically directs human workers to intervene as needed — an extra free drink here, a bonus spin there. "Before it used to be like a pit boss maybe having their eyes on 40 players across five tables" to monitor bet sizes and manually assign perks and freebies, says Kasra Ghaharian, a researcher at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, International Gaming Institute. "It wasn't very accurate," he says. AI allows casinos to "be much more precise in how you're tracking that activity."

Beyond using AI for efficiency gains and user profiling, the industry's ultimate vision for employing the technology is much more ambitious — and unsettling.

In a research paper published last May, the consultancy giant Deloitte's Global Lottery and Gambling Centre of Excellence predicted a future where every game could be personalized in real time to appeal to individual gamblers. Generative AI, the authors wrote, could "allow the games themselves to generate content based on the explicit or even implicit actions of players, from instantly generated new items and playing levels to in-game characters that can have lifelike discussions."

The technology, they continued, could create "individually themed online slot games that can respond to a player's voice and even generate novel content in response to a player's behavior and game history." Generative AI chatbots the players could talk to, games with themes automatically tailored to their preference — the ultimate filter bubble. Social media's endlessly personalized carousel of content is already notoriously addictive, and the damaging parasocial relationships that can be formed with AI chatbots are currently under a microscope following reports of suicide and self-harm linked to a popular provider. Adding these elements to the famously powerful money-extraction machine that is online gambling is a potent combination.

Gambling is historically a human-centric business — gamblers try their luck against the house, for better or worse. But Christina Thakor-Rankin, a veteran industry consultant based in the United Kingdom, dreams of an automatically managed brick-and-mortar casino in the years and decades ahead, akin to Amazon's automated Go convenience stores, with unnecessary human staff costs eating into the casino's margins.

"Look at the amount of operating expenditure required in terms of serving customers, monitoring customers, keeping them safe, people who work in the cage or the cashier pit bosses. What if you had a casino that was very similar to the new generation of self-service Amazon stores where you don't need cash and you don't need people?" she asked. "How would that kind of technology transform a world of sportsbooks, but also land-based casinos?"

At least one casino workers union, the Culinary Workers Union, has raised concerns about the risk of blue-collar jobs in Las Vegas being automated. In 2019, The Nevada Independent reported that between 38% and 65% of casino jobs (depending on the study cited) in the south of the state could be automated over the next decade and a half, calling the city "one of the most vulnerable to automation in the entire country."

But for many gamblers, a trip to Vegas isn't just a transaction — it's an experience, punctuated by banter with dealers, table service, shows, and the seedy glamour of the strip. It remains to be seen if they will accept a robot substitute.

Artificial intelligence may be a moneymaker for gambling companies, but the companies say it's also something else: a remedy for problem gambling.

Playtech, a European gambling software provider, is one of several firms using AI to try to suss out when a gambler is demonstrating signs of addiction or problematic play and intervene. Part of this is recognizing a player's patterns — larger-than-usual bets, or declined deposits, or playing at unexpected times — and interjecting with prompts suggesting they take a break. (Future Anthem says its systems can also detect aberrant behavior and automatically check in with target gamblers.)

"Online gambling companies have lots, tons of data about their players because every single bet or every spin on a slot, every single deposit, the time you spend online, there's lots of information," says Francesco Rodano, Playech's chief policy officer. "So we train an AI model to analyze this behavior and recognize possible harmful patterns."

Playtech and other gambling companies are also developing chatbots that gamblers can talk to about addiction — the logic being that because gambling addiction is stigmatized, addicts may actually be more comfortable talking to a nonhuman.

Rodano acknowledges that the same technology that could help problem gamblers could also be used to exacerbate their addictions. "If you use a tool like ours to identify vulnerable players, in theory, you could use that information to target them — which is the opposite of what the tool is intended for, which is totally unethical," he says. "If you operate in a regulated market, it's very unlikely to happen because the regulator would notice that and clamp down."

Amid frothy valuations and wild hype, there's a risk of overstating the technology's near-term promise — particularly the more giddy ideas, such as Thakor-Rankin's predictions of a Caesar's Palace augmented with robotic, voice-activated "Centurions." And some industry insiders say that what's now called AI might be considered statistics or big data, just rebranded.

"I like to say that we've been doing AI since before it was cool and this new age of AI hype — it's been very interesting to navigate because on the one hand, everyone wants to talk about AI, which is great for us," says Stasi Baran, nQube's cofounder.

"On the other hand, there's so much noise to sift through for our customers and for us as well to determine, everyone says that they've got an AI product, but what's actually real and what actually brings real value? I mean, that's difficult to determine. I think there's a lot of overnight AI experts out there, and that concerns us."

This AI frothiness isn't unique to the gambling industry, and the space has long had a nose for innovations that boost its bottom line — from the development of electromechanical slot machines in the 1960s to the creation of loyalty programs for high rollers in the '80s. As ever, the house always wins.

Rob Price is a senior correspondent for Business Insider and writes features and investigations about the technology industry. His Signal number is +1 650-636-6268, and his email is [email protected].

Richard Marcus was a casino cheat in Las Vegas for 25 years. He says he used a mixture of chip scams and social engineering to con casinos such as Caesars Palace, the MGM Grand, and the Riviera out of millions of dollars. Though he was tailed by private investigators, he was never caught.

Marcus discusses the influence of the Italian Mafia in Las Vegas and his early years of being recruited while working as a dealer at the Four Queens Casino. He covers casino cheating teams and how they used the false shuffle in baccarat and the Savannah move. He also discusses casino surveillance, security, and the role of the police and the FBI, and he suggests ways to catch cheaters.

Marcus now works as a security advisor at several casinos and chairs the Global Table Games & Game Protection Conference. He is the author of "American Roulette," "The World's Greatest Gambling Scams," and "The Great Casino Heist."

For more, visit:
https://www.youtube.com/@richardmarcuscasinos https://globaltablegamesprotection.com/books/