5WPR Research Division | April 15, 2026
The U.S. sports betting and online gaming industries collectively spent $3.9 billion on advertising and marketing in 2025, making gambling one of the top five advertising categories on American television for the third consecutive year.
Today, 5WPR is publishing the Gaming Trust Index — the first annual study to document where that $3.9 billion went, what it built, and where the gaps are. The index covers the top operators across sports betting, online gaming, and land-based casino, drawing on public market data, operator financial disclosures, advertising spend tracking from Kantar Media, MediaRadar, and iSpot.tv, and analysis of more than 47,000 earned media articles.
The Allocation Problem
Television advertising accounts for $1.42 billion of total spend — 36%. Digital performance marketing takes another $980 million. Celebrity and athlete endorsement deals account for $520 million. Against those figures: $90 million on earned media and PR. $60 million on responsible gambling programs. The two categories with the highest documented return on brand credibility receive the smallest share of the budget.
“The number that stands out isn’t the $1.4 billion on TV. It’s the $60 million on responsible gambling programs. That is 1.5% of total marketing spend in an industry that has legalization pending in multiple major states and regulatory scrutiny as a constant operating condition. That ratio will not hold.”
— Matt Caiola, CEO, 5WPR
The Celebrity Math
$520 million on celebrity partnerships. $60 million on responsible gambling. That is nearly a 9-to-1 ratio between borrowed credibility and owned credibility. Celebrity campaigns drive awareness and short-term acquisition metrics. They do not build the regulatory goodwill, institutional investor confidence, or earned media equity that define competitive advantage as the market matures past its initial land-grab phase.
The operators who recognize this distinction and rebalance — even modestly, 3 to 4 percentage points of the total budget — will be meaningfully better positioned in the next phase of the market.
Land-Based Casino: The Search Gap Nobody Is Talking About
The Gaming Trust Index extends its analysis to land-based casino — a $67.8 billion GGR market that has been largely absent from the sports betting communications conversation. MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, Wynn Resorts, Hard Rock International, Penn Entertainment, and Boyd Gaming generate millions of monthly branded searches. The content filling those searches is almost entirely third-party: review sites, financial news, regulatory coverage.
As AI-powered search tools synthesize brand information, operators who have not built owned and earned content ecosystems are ceding their narratives to third parties. This is the GEO gap the index documents — and it represents one of the clearest first-mover opportunities in consumer brand strategy right now.
“The brands that move first on digital content infrastructure will own how AI search tools describe them to the next generation of casino visitors. That is not a marginal advantage. It is a structural one.”
— Matt Caiola, CEO, 5WPR
Online Gaming: The Pre-Legalization Window
Online gaming — iCasino, iPoker, daily fantasy — generated $12.8 billion in GGR in 2025 and receives the lowest communications investment per revenue dollar of any segment in the analysis. With New York, Illinois, Indiana, and Virginia in active legislative consideration, operators that build earned media presence now will have a documented first-mover advantage at launch. The 2021 Michigan online gaming rollout established this pattern: operators with pre-existing earned media presence in the state achieved faster initial user acquisition than those who arrived with advertising budgets alone.
The full Gaming Trust Index 2026 — including the complete spend analysis, earned media methodology, responsible gambling communications audit, and sector breakdowns — is available free at https://www.5wpr.com/research/gaming-trust-index-2026/
