Spectrum Gaming’s 2025 Casino Insights & Predictions
World Renowned casino consultancy group, Spectrum Gaming lays out 10 things to watch in 2025.
Key Facts:
- Sweepstakes Casino continue to be top of mind for everybody in the iGaming industry
- New York City and Texas have some big decisions to make
- Increasing oversight on everything from taxes to responsible gaming may be the most impactful topic of 2025
- Sports betting needs a new hook to continue its phenomenal growth
Spectrum Gaming Group has been in the casino consultancy business for over thirty years, and its client list is a veritable who’s who in not just the iGaming world but also land-based casinos. So when they speak, everybody listens.
This week, they discussed the top ten things the casino world should pay attention to in 2025. While not an exhaustive list, we think they make a pretty good argument for what to watch in the year ahead.
Sweepstakes, Sweepstakes, and More Sweepstakes
As you might expect after this year’s G2E, the rise of sweepstakes casinos continues to be the hottest of hot discussions, no matter which side of the debate you find yourself on. The American Gaming Association will continue to apply legal and lobbying pressure next year to force sweeps back in states where it can.
New lawsuits filed in states like New York, which have very low standards for what constitutes illegal gambling and very high settlements for plaintiffs who can prove their cases, are just the opening salvos in a legal battle and a Public Relations war.
The ability to point to a New York precedent calling sweeps illegal or black market would make the AGA’s lobbying efforts in other states that much easier. It would also provide cover to start mailing cease and desist letters hand over fist to all sweeps casinos.
But the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow, so we are unlikely to have any decisions out of either New York or other states with pending litigation until much later in the year.
Everything Is Bigger in Texas, Except Possibly Casinos in New York
Two of the country’s most populous states will likely make momentous decisions about the future of gaming this year. Spectrum believes both states deserve some attention.
In New York, three licenses are up for grabs in the Southern District, which essentially covers New York City and the surrounding boroughs. Over a dozen of the world’s largest casino operators and a few also-rans have thrown their hats into the ring. Names like Wynn, MGM, and Caesars have all submitted bids as high as $12 billion.
Many expect that two of the licenses will go to Resorts World and MGM, which already have smaller resorts without full-scale gaming in Queens and Yonkers, respectively. These two well-respected operators could see tax revenue and building completion much quicker than creating an entire resort from scratch.
With New York City casino estimated to generate over 5 billion in revenue once all three casinos are ramped up and tens of thousands of well-paying jobs are on the line, this will be the most watched licensing process in recent memory.
Meanwhile, Miriam Adelson, the Las Vegas Sands owner, has just spent $100 million in the Presidential election. While she and her late husband Sheldon have always been stalwart Republican donors, they seldom write checks without strings attached.
The Sands has spent the last few years attempting to sway legislators in Texas to at least crack the door on gambling in the last, biggest untouched gambling market. Whether it’s sports betting or limited land-based casino licenses, they hold out perennial hope that this year will be the year.
While this seems mostly all hat and no cattle type of speculation this year, as the votes don’t seem to be there, we suppose that at some point, all that lobbying money sloshing around Austin is bound to tip the scales eventually.
Year of the Regulator
As Spectrum rightly points out, state tax commissions and regulating agencies seem to be launching a two-pronged attack on existing sports betting and gaming operators. State after state has proposed raising taxes on online sportsbooks or other gaming activity in the past few months, and this year’s legislative session around the country is likely to see even more attempts.
At the same time, state regulators and even federal legislators are bringing increasing heat on the responsible gaming front. A steady drumbeat of studies is becoming increasingly clear about the scope and scale of the impact of increased online sports betting and the advertising that goes with it on Americans, especially young males.
The data isn’t looking great. Something will need to be done, and the possible dangers of not acting quickly or in proportion to the threat are laid out in the SAFE Bet Act, a Federal bill that would impose rather harsh terms on operators in every state.
If gaming operators wish to avoid this fate, they will need to demonstrate that they are taking the harm done by their product seriously and that they are moving quickly to help mitigate it.
Both increased taxation and responsible gaming will come down to better optics. Metaphors about not killing the golden goose will abound, as will talk about all the jobs and increased good done with the tax money already being paid in.
But the stakes are high here, and it will indeed be a story to watch closely in many different state houses in 2025.
Sportsbooks Need Better Technology
Since the Supreme Court overturned PASPA in 2018, 39 states and the District of Columbia have passed sports betting laws, either online or in retail sportsbooks. Revenue is expected to reach roughly $14 billion, which is a staggering sum in just six years of growing the market.
But with most states already having legalized sports betting and user penetration only expected to grow from 11% today vs 15.56% by 2029, where will future growth come from?
One hoped-for answer has always been in-play betting. Think bets on whether the next pitch will be a ball or a strike or whether the next pass in a college football game is complete or incomplete.
Unfortunately, the technology to allow lines to be posted in time for players to make those kinds of bets hasn’t yet materialized, or at least not in a way that works well and consistently. There is some hope that AI might help with quicker lines, but that is far from a proven and fieldable technology.
Without in-play betting materializing over the next couple of years, what other hooks can sportsbooks use to grow handle or the amount of total wagers on sports? Especially with many states outlawing props on individual college players, both to lessen temptation and relieve some of the pressure to perform.
There is no easy answer, but billions are on the line, so expect the nascent sports betting industry to throw lots of things at the wall in the coming year to see what sticks.
Old Horse Races and New Gray Market Games
Also on Spectrum’s list of things to watch are Historical Horse Racing and Skill Machines. Both are attempts to push the legal boundary of what constitutes a slot machine. And both types of games managed to make huge strides last year in several states where those boundaries are drawn.
Skill games had a great 2024 in courts across Pennsylvania, and in Wyoming, skill games brought in 40 million in revenue and paid another 5 million in taxes. Even in states like Georgia and Virginia, state courts are wrestling with the definition of a slot machine vs. a game that rewards skill.
Historical Horse Racing is a VLT that allows you to bet on the outcome of a random horse race from somewhere, sometime in the past. It mimics the random outcome of a slot machine in that the outcome isn’t known.
It can be almost completely legal in states with looser parimutuel and horse betting laws, like Kentucky, New Hampshire, and Wyoming.
Courts will continue to attempt to use often century-old laws about gambling paraphernalia to determine the legality of ever-new and changing technology, often custom-made for the explicit purpose of circumventing said laws.
Mergers
Last on the list of 2025 significant issues centers around that same technological innovation: mergers between operators looking to enter new revenue verticals, such as casino operators entering machine route operations or buying up online lottery ticket providers, to name but a few.
Many gaming companies continue looking for new ways to gain customers and diversify traditional gaming revenue streams into either new technological innovations or different gaming operations. Spectrum, almost certainly correctly, believes this will be another ongoing development that continues to snowball throughout next year.
The Year Ahead
As 2025 unfolds, these trends will undoubtedly shape the gaming industry’s future. But the unexpected developments—technological breakthroughs, legislative shifts, or market surprises—will define the year’s legacy.
