The 12 Most Impactful People In Gambling In 2025

Well, we’ve just about made it. We’re only a few days away from the end of 2025. And for any of us who aren’t confident about making it to New Year’s, we can go on our prediction market of choice and make a financial hedge on the planet imploding or some such outcome.

Yes, 2025 has been the year of the prediction market in the gambling world — but it’s been many other things as well. It’s been the year of the player-prop scandal, the year of the New York casino licensing, the year of the great sweepstakes crackdown.

And it’s for sure been the cease-and-desist-iest year we can remember.

In this article, we’ll single out the 12 people who had the most profound impact on the gambling world in 2025. And we do mean “single out” — there will be no cop-outs here where we name an entire company or a trade organization or even a duo.

Yeah, we see you, Time Magazine, with your BS naming “the architects of AI” as Person of the Year. “The architects” is not a “person,” last we checked.

Speaking of Time, its Person of the Year is not necessarily given to someone who had a positive impact, and the same approach applies here. Among these dozen honorees, some were good for gaming, some were not, and some are open to debate on that front.

But all had a significant impact. Here they are, in alphabetical order:

Chauncey Billups

You could make a case for a few people in the realm of sports betting scandal, but the head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers (currently on unpaid leave) is the face of it all. He’s a Basketball Hall of Famer and NBA champion, far more recognizable than Terry Rozier or Emmanuel Clase or any other athlete who got into hot water in 2025, and he crosses over as a central figure in the alleged mob-rigged poker games scandal and the sports betting scandal (if we can assume he’s “Co-Conspirator 8,” which we feel comfortable assuming). When we remember the various messes that got the FBI all up in the gaming industry’s business in 2025 and potentially end up resulting in a clampdown on player prop wagering, we will picture “Mr. Big Shot” first.

Steve Cohen

The downstate New York casino licenses were the story of the year in brick-and-mortar gaming, and now that three of them have been awarded, it’s New York Mets owner Cohen who stands out. His forthcoming Metropolitan Park casino complex, in partnership with Hard Rock, figures to be the most trafficked of the three new properties and is projected by some to be the busiest singular casino in the country when all is said and done. Industry advisor GGHM is projecting Metropolitan Park will generate $33.5 billion in tax revenue over the course of its 30-year license. That’s more than Cohen’s net worth. (Barely.) Cohen came up against headwinds — some of the people of Queens are not crazy about having an $8 billion casino in their backyard — but, unlike his Mets for the last 39 years, Cohen ultimately got it done.

Mike Crapo

What’s a 74-year-old Republican senator from Idaho who you probably never heard of during his first 26 years in Congress (unless you’re from Idaho) doing on this list of impactful gaming people? Well, Crapo is the legislator who inserted the language in the federal spending bill signed on July 4 that is poised to make it so gamblers have to pay taxes on 100% of their winnings but can only deduct based on 90% of their losses. In other words, it’s going to be possible to lose more than you win in a gambling year and owe the IRS money. Other legislators, most prominently Nevada Rep. Dina Titus, have been scrambling ever since to get the clause reversed. Professional gamblers have been panicking that they won’t be able to make a living any more. Poker players in particular are freaking out. And it’s the Crapo clause that caused all of this.

Howard Glaser

One year ago, sweepstakes gaming had all the buzz, attracting as much investment and excitement as any vertical out there. But things can change with the turn of a card — or a calendar, in this case. The year was a disaster for sweeps operators, with six states banning sweepstakes gambling and more than 100 cease-and-desist letters filed across a double-digit tally of states. Since it’s hard to single out a particular legislator or regulator for driving the anti-sweeps movement, it’s Glaser, Light & Wonder’s global head of government affairs and legislative counsel, who stands out. Glaser — whose company partners with regulated casino operators — made it his mission to speak out publicly wherever he could against the legality of these sites and apps. And, in lopsided fashion, his side is winning this battle.

Amy Howe

You had to know higher-ups from FanDuel and/or DraftKings were going to crack this list, right? Howe is the CEO of FanDuel — top of the org chart in the U.S. — and FanDuel just happens to be No. 1 nationwide in sports betting and iCasino revenue. The company also entered the prediction market game with FanDuel Predicts in December, and Howe explained that its partnership with CME was something the executives had been working on throughout 2025. FanDuel made other news this year: leaving the American Gaming Association (AGA), getting a $31 billion valuation, taking the lead on imposing a surcharge on Illinois sports betting customers, and on and on. Howe, the company’s CEO since 2021, was at the center of all of it.

Tarek Mansour

There was one sure thing for inclusion when this article was conceived. And it’s the co-founder and outspoken public face of Kalshi. The company was the leader from the word “go” (or, more accurately, the lack of the word “stop”) on prediction market sports event contracts, pushing the envelope, suing states, and getting sued by states. Mansour claimed prediction markets are the ultimate source of truth, he claimed prediction markets aren’t betting, and he frequently contradicted himself on both fronts. Certainly, Mansour had help in making prediction markets the biggest story of the gambling year. His Kalshi co-founder, Luana Lopes Lara, may do just as much behind the scenes as him, and then there’s Vlad Tenev, whose Robinhood has generated the majority of Kalshi’s trading volume, or Shayne Coplan, whose Polymarket has garnered almost as many headlines as Kalshi. But in 2025, none was quite as omnipresent, controversial, and impactful as Mansour.

Michael Mizrachi

Let’s get an actual gambler on this list, shall be? And as gamblers go, nobody had a year quite like veteran poker pro Mizrachi. He won the $50K Poker Players Championship at the World Series of Poker — considered by many the ultimate test of tournament skill — for more than $1.3 million. He followed that up a couple of weeks later by winning the WSOP Main Event — the most sought-after title in the game — for a cool $10 million. It was such a ludicrous back-to-back that WSOP decided to induct “The Grinder” into the Poker Hall of Fame on the spot, throwing the entire nominating/balloting process out the window. Poker has been waiting the entire 2000s for an established superstar to win the main event, and Mizrachi, now an eight-time bracelet winner, got it done.

Dan Patrick

Texas’ lieutenant governor wielded his influence on two major fronts in the gambling world in 2025. As has been the case throughout his tenure, Patrick proudly stood as the biggest reason regulated gaming can’t come to the Lone Star State, shooting down every casino and sports betting proposal and insisting the votes aren’t there to pass anything. But he also found a very public new crusade this year, putting his state at the center of the lottery world’s biggest controversy. After a Texas woman won the state lottery in February for a near-record $83.5 million, Patrick launched an investigation into the lottery courier, Jackpocket, that purchased the ticket on the winner’s behalf, and ultimately succeeded in running couriers out of the state. He also indirectly got the Texas Lottery Commission sued by the winner for refusing for months to pay her and shifted control of lottery in the state to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.

Caroline Pham

It’s not always the things you do that make you impactful. Sometimes it’s the things you don’t do. And as the acting chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) from Jan. 20 until this Monday, Pham had unique power in the battle over prediction markets offering sports bets. Her inaction with that power — never standing in the way of Kalshi or other operators as they stretched the limits with their proposed offerings — proved critical in allowing the PMs to get a foothold. In fact, as other commissioners peeled off one by one, Pham was left with all the power in her final few months before new CFTC Chair Michael Selig was appointed this week. Had Pham’s CFTC pushed back on PMs at all, the state of sports betting entering 2026 might look very different.

Jason Robins

We couldn’t very well include FanDuel CEO Howe and not include her DraftKings counterpart — even if FanDuel has been winning the revenue war on all fronts but DFS. DraftKings has also launched its own prediction market vertical and also exited the AGA because it chose to enter prediction markets — this despite Robins saying in October that he couldn’t see bettors choosing PMs over sportsbooks. When it comes to public profile, being outspoken, and occasionally inserting his foot into his mouth, Robins rates somewhere above Howe and below Mansour.

Victor Rocha

If you want to be involved in gaming in California, you’d better get on the right side of the tribes. And if you’re on the wrong side of the tribes, Rocha, the conference chair of the Indian Gaming Association, will let the world know. His social media statements may rub some the wrong way, but they communicate that he and the rest of Indian Country will fight for what they believe in. In 2025, that meant successfully pushing to ban sweepstakes gaming in his state and also rallying against prediction markets and DFS. It also meant bringing tribes together and sharing his playbook so that as many of the tribal gaming leaders as possible are rowing in the same direction. You can disagree with Rocha. But in 2025, more than ever, you couldn’t ignore him.

Josh Sterling

We finish with one more noteworthy name in the prediction market world, one more representative of Kalshi whose tongue can spark controversy. Sterling, a Kalshi attorney, authored maybe the most talked-about quote of the year in the industry when he declared at a summer conference with regard to gamblers: “People are adults, and they’re allowed to spend their money however they want, and if they lose their shirt, that’s on them.” Not exactly the responsible gambling message the regulated industry has been pushing. In general, Sterling and the rest of the Kalshi legal team have been effective in presenting arguments in favor of prediction markets that have thus far been hard to disprove. This war will likely be fought in the courts for years to come, which means we may need to get used to Sterling’s presence among the most impactful people in gambling.