The entertainment business is always evolving. Streaming media replaced traditional video rentals, and live concerts now generate more money than selling albums. The same evolution is happening in casinos. This trend is a glimpse into where consumer spending is going.
From Gambling Venue to Entertainment Destination
Two decades ago, a casino was only about gaming. The food, rooms, and entertainment were all about keeping people at the casino longer to gamble more. Today, that model has flipped on its head.
Today, the largest casino operators compete on just as wide an array of products as they do on the number of games they can offer. For instance, MGM Resorts, in 2023, had $16.16 billion in revenue, with a healthy percentage of that coming from outside their gaming business.
The math is simple: winning a customer’s business for an overnight stay, a meal, and an entertainment event is far less expensive than winning them over to gamble. Attracting new gamblers is expensive, and they’ve built their model on that fact.
The Numbers Behind the Market
The extent of this transition becomes even clearer when one considers the numbers. The American Gaming Association states that gaming revenue in the United States for 2024 reached a record $71.92 billion. This is already the fourth year in a row that gaming revenues have reached a record. Of this sum, online gaming accounted for 30%, increasing from 25% in 2023 and 13% in 2021.
This change in channel mix also brings with it the challenge of split design. Physical spaces compete for mood and hospitality, while digital spaces compete for product breadth and the smoothness of the user interface. These are different design disciplines, and people who try to do the same in both tend to do a poor job in both.
Revenue Split Across Commercial Gaming Segments in 2024
That $71.92 billion breakdown shows how the industry’s source of income has spread out. Before diving into the figures, it’s worth pointing out that each of these segments vie for a portion of the same user time and wallet:
| Segment | 2024 Revenue | Year-on-Year Change |
| Traditional casino gaming (slots, tables) | $49.78 billion | +0.8% |
| Sports betting | $13.71 billion | +25.4% |
| iGaming (online casino, 7 states) | $8.41 billion | +28.7% |
The growth is turning to digital platforms. Although the land-based market remains the largest, its growth rate is being overshadowed by that of sports betting and online casinos. This is the implication for operators: a requirement to re-evaluate the investment strategies – what may have made sense in a 5-8% per annum growth environment in the land-based market is no longer valid when growth is below 1%, while for online it is 25-28%.
Sports Betting and the NBA Betting Markets Connection
The world of sports betting has changed the way casinos operate when it comes to customer engagement. Physical sportsbooks have evolved from backroom operations to prominent front-of-the-casino locations at the country’s best casinos.
In the United States, NBA odds have taken center stage in this evolution. Basketball is a fast-paced game that takes place 82 times during the regular season. The NBA season runs concurrently with the NFL, college basketball, and Major League Baseball. The result is that it is one of the most bet on sports, and NBA betting takes place almost nightly from October to June.
NBA betting has now become one of the main drivers of in-venue betting at casino locations adjacent to arenas. Venues near the Barclays Center in Brooklyn or the Chase Center in San Francisco have created betting lounges that are destinations before or after games.
NBA betting markets on modern sportsbook platforms now extend well beyond the game winner. The depth of what is available reflects how the product has evolved to serve more engaged users:
- player proposition bets (points, rebounds, assists over/under);
- live in-play wagering on score margins and quarter results;
- same-game parlays combining multiple outcomes within a single contest;
- futures markets on division winners, conference champions, and MVP awards.
The expansion of NBA odds across these market types has driven longer session times on digital platforms. A bettor who was previously limited to a point spread now has dozens of markets active simultaneously during a single game.
Technology as a Competitive Infrastructure
The customer experience changes being made by casinos are not purely aesthetic. Several are structural changes in how the product is built and delivered.
The most operationally significant developments are the following:
- AI-driven personalisation – session data feeds machine learning systems that adjust game recommendations, bonus offers, and responsible gambling prompts in real time.
- Cashless gaming infrastructure – digital wallet integration and tap-to-pay terminals reduce transaction friction, which matters both for user experience and for operators who need data on player behaviour.
- Live dealer platforms – streaming technology has allowed online casinos to replicate table game social dynamics; this segment has grown faster than automated online casino categories.
These are not independent investments. Operators with mature cashless infrastructure generate better behavioural data. Better data makes AI personalisation more accurate. The operators who built these systems early now have a compounding advantage over those still running legacy payment and player tracking systems.
The Competitive Pressure on Mid-Tier Operators
Scale matters significantly in this industry. Large operators can absorb compliance costs, marketing spend, and technology investment that represent a much higher share of revenue for smaller competitors.
The mid-tier is under the most pressure. It cannot match the resort scale of MGM or Wynn. It cannot compete for digital market share with the marketing budgets of Flutter Entertainment or DraftKings. And it faces the same regulatory compliance requirements as both.
The strategies that have worked for mid-sized operators tend to share a common characteristic: they focus narrowly on a geography, a customer segment, or both – rather than trying to compete across the full market.
Responsible Gambling as a Product Design Constraint
Regulatory pressure on responsible gambling is no longer just a box to tick; it’s now part of product design. So, in a regulated market, tools like deposit limits, session reminders, and self-exclusion are not hidden in obscure settings menus. That fundamentally changes the cost of acquisition.
Operators can’t rely on high-frequency promotions targeting casual gamblers who have low friction to onboard and deposit. The cost of acquiring a compliant, responsible gambling customer is higher, but so is the lifetime value of that customer. The entertainment-led strategy, which many of the larger casinos have moved towards, is, in part, a response to this pressure.
A customer who checks in, goes to a show, and gambles for a couple of hours on a Friday night is a very different type of customer from someone who’s just high-frequency online betting. Both are valid, and both are customers, but only one is consistent with the direction that, in most of the major markets, the regulators are pushing us towards.
