Pennsylvania Study: Small Number Of Gamblers Driving Online Casino Records

One of the more under-reported quirks of the current gambling landscape in America is how iCasino revenue keeps going up. And up again. And up once more.

Why under-reported? I’m guessing because regulated online casino is currently only available in seven states (with Maine set to be the eighth later this year).

But the numbers don’t lie: Online casino revenue just continues to set records everywhere.

I’ve tried to suss out what the driving force is, but — full disclosure — I wasn’t entirely happy with my own results.

Enter the 2025 Pennsylvania Interactive Gaming Assessment Online Gambling Report, produced by Penn State’s Criminal Justice Research Center, which shines a light on just who, exactly, is making these big donations to online casino.

And while what happens in Pennsylvania doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing is happening in the other six states, it’s probably fair to assume there are strong similarities.

So who is it? Who’s losing all this money to the online casinos?

Big spenders, that’s who.

Players gonna play

The study says online casino play is “heavily skewed” to people playing with large dollar amounts. 

This is abundantly clear in the median vs. mean comparisons. For those of you (like me) who can’t remember 8th grade math, the mean is the average and the median is the middle value when the entire data set is ordered.

And the median monthly spend for a Pennsylvanian who played online was $40, according to the study. In other words, half of all players spent more than $40, and half of all players spent less than $40.

But the mean … well, that tells a bit of a different story, as that number came in at a whopping $792.

That gap between the median and the mean isn’t a rounding error. It’s a flashing klaxon that a relatively small group of players is spending far more than everyone else.

That’s what “heavily skewed” means in practice. Most players cluster toward the low end. A thinner slice at the top spends enough to pull the average way up. And when you’re talking about a product that runs 24/7, is frictionless to access, and lives in everyone’s pocket, that thin slice can move billions.

Speaking of billions

Through Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board–licensed platforms, total online gambling revenue increased by more than 50% year over year, rising from about $2.1 billion to more than $3.2 billion. Most of that growth came from iGaming, where revenue increased by more than 75%, from roughly $1.4 billion to about $2.4 billion. So mobile sports betting accounted for 25% of revenue, and online casino, in all its forms, the rest.

So how many people are actually playing online casino in the commonwealth?

In the past year, 3.8% of Pennsylvania adults reported playing what the report referred to as “online electronic gambling machines,” which include online slots and similar games. Another 2.6% reported playing online table games such as blackjack, roulette, or poker-style games. 

For comparison, even if you combine them, this is still less than the 7.8% of people who bet on sports in Pennsylvania.

Online casino play also rarely exists in isolation. The study found that a very Pennsylvania-like 17.76% of the state’’s adults gambled online in the past year using its representative sample, and nearly four in five of those online gamblers also gambled offline. Only about 3.9% of adults gambled exclusively online, without any retail or land-based gambling.

Responsibility

While these numbers are obviously good for the operators, calls to the 1-800-GAMBLER number surged in the state — specifically those calls tied specifically to online gambling, reaching a record 1,230 calls in 2024-25. Those calls represented more than half of total helpline volume, according to the report.

At the same time, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board’s iGaming self-exclusion list added 4,403 new enrollments during the fiscal year, bringing the total number of people on the list to 11,195 — a nearly 65% increase from the prior year.

All in all, the findings paint a consistent picture: Online casino gambling in Pennsylvania is expanding rapidly, and much of the growth is being fueled by a relatively small group of high-intensity players.

That’s not a value judgment. It’s simply a statement of where the money is coming from.