Gambling companies report their revenue every year, and it's worth knowing what that number really is. Their revenue is the money players bet minus the money players won back. In other words, the industry's revenue is the players' losses. In the UK it's called gross gambling yield; in Australia, gambling expenditure.
Great Britain: £16.8 billion
From April 2024 to March 2025, the licensed gambling industry in Great Britain kept £16.8 billion from its customers, according to the Gambling Commission. Online casino games alone took £5.0 billion. Leaving out lotteries, the total was £12.6 billion.
United States: $78.6 billion, a record
US commercial casinos, sportsbooks and online casinos took a record $78.6 billion in 2025, according to the American Gaming Association. That figure doesn't include casinos run by Native American tribes, which are reported separately, so the true total is higher.
Australia: A$1,528 per adult
Australians lost A$33.0 billion gambling in 2024–25, according to the official Australian Gambling Statistics. More than half of it, A$17.4 billion, went into poker machines. That works out to A$1,528 for every adult in the country, and over A$2,000 per adult in New South Wales.
What the averages hide
A per-adult figure includes everyone, including the many people who never gamble at all. So people who do gamble lose more than the average, and the money isn't spread evenly: some lose a little, some lose a great deal. For examples of how fast losses can grow for one person, see real gambling losses: verified cases.
Where does your share come from?
None of these billions are luck. They're the house edge, applied to every bet, by millions of people, every day. To see what your own share is likely to be at your stakes, try the calculator.
Sources
- UK Gambling Commission: Industry statistics: annual report, April 2024 to March 2025 (25 November 2025)
- InterGame: AGA reports record US commercial gaming revenue in 2025
- Queensland Government Statistician's Office: Australian Gambling Statistics, 41st edition, 1999–00 to 2024–25: summary tables
- Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation: Latest edition of Australian Gambling Statistics (per-adult expenditure)