Who Profits from Gambling Addiction? The $71.9 Billion Industry Exposed

By Kate Waycrest, Gambling Recovery Coach.

When I first started building this recovery coaching practice, I could not understand something. Where were all the resources? Where were the evidence-based programs, the public education campaigns, the government-funded recovery initiatives for gambling? We have rehab centres for drugs. We have AA meetings in every city. We have national hotlines for alcohol, opioids, eating disorders. But for gambling? Almost nothing. A few pamphlets. A helpline with long wait times. And government websites that read like they were written to check a box rather than save a life. I thought I had stumbled into a gap in the market. A window of opportunity. But the longer I do this work, the more I realize the truth is far more sinister. The gap is not an accident. It is by design.

How Much Money the Gambling Industry Makes from Addicted Gamblers

In 2024, U.S. commercial gambling revenue reached an all-time record of $71.92 billion, marking the fourth consecutive year of record-breaking revenue (American Gaming Association, 2025). That is not a typo. Seventy-one billion dollars in a single year, extracted from the wallets and bank accounts and credit lines of gamblers across America. And that figure does not include tribal gaming, lottery sales, or the illegal gambling market, which the AGA estimates actually exceeds legal gambling revenue (AGA, 2022).

Now ask yourself: who benefits from those billions?

The answer is almost everyone except the gambler. State governments collect billions in tax revenue from gambling operations. In the United Kingdom alone, gambling duties are projected to reach $4.8 billion in 2025 (Yogonet, 2025). In the United States, state tax revenues from online gambling surged after legalization, with operator taxable revenues increasing 18-fold to $9.2 billion (Taylor, McCarthy, and Wilbur, 2024). Sports leagues receive hundreds of millions in sponsorship deals from gambling operators. Media companies run gambling advertisements during prime time. News outlets publish odds and betting tips alongside their headlines. Casinos employ hundreds of thousands of people. Lottery commissions fund education budgets. Indigenous communities depend on casino revenue for essential services and infrastructure. Technology companies build the apps. Payment processors handle the transactions. Influencers promote betting platforms for affiliate commissions.

The gambling industry does not have a few stakeholders. It has an entire ecosystem of institutions, governments, and individuals who all have a financial interest in keeping you gambling. And when that many powerful entities profit from your addiction, the last thing any of them want is for you to quit.

Why the Government Profits from Gambling Addiction

This statement sounds conspiratorial until you look at the numbers. A landmark 2024 study by Taylor, McCarthy, and Wilbur at the University of Southern California analyzed the effects of online gambling legalization policies across every U.S. state. Their findings were devastating. As states legalized online gambling, tax revenue soared. But so did gambling harm. Calls to the National Council on Problem Gambling helpline surged 150% over five years, from 32,666 in 2019 to 83,660 in 2023 (NCPG, 2024). The researchers found that "policies that legalize online casino gambling increase tax revenue, irresponsible gambling, and gambling helpline calls significantly" (Taylor et al., 2024).

In other words, governments are fully aware that legalizing more forms of gambling increases addiction and harm. They legalize it anyway because the tax revenue is too lucrative to resist. And then they allocate a fraction of that revenue toward treatment and prevention. The 2021 Survey of Publicly Funded Problem Gambling Services found that most states spend less than 1% of their gambling revenue on problem gambling services (NAADGS, 2022). Some states spend nothing at all.

This is not an oversight. When your budget depends on gambling revenue, funding robust recovery programs that would reduce the number of gamblers is a direct threat to your income. Government "responsible gambling" pages are not designed to help you quit. They are designed to give the appearance of caring while ensuring the money keeps flowing.

How Gambling Industry Funding Corrupts Addiction Research

It gets worse. In 2020, a group of clinicians and scientists wrote in The Lancet Psychiatry that too little research is being conducted into problem gambling, and that what research does exist is often funded by the gambling industry rather than by independent sources (Wardle et al., 2020). They argued for a 1% statutory levy on the gambling industry to fund independent research, because the current system creates a fundamental conflict of interest: the industry that profits from addiction is funding the studies that are supposed to understand and prevent that addiction.

The UK government's own assessment of gambling treatment services acknowledged that the system is "fragmented" and that "there is a significant unmet need for treatment" (Department of Health and Social Care, 2023). A Washington State study found that despite growing gambling revenue, publicly funded problem gambling services remained chronically underfunded and unable to meet demand (WSGC, 2019). In March 2025, NPR reported that experts are deeply worried about the lack of addiction treatments even as legalized sports betting continues to expand into new states (Riddle, 2025).

The industry funds the research. The government collects the taxes. The sports leagues take the sponsorships. The media runs the ads. And the gambler? The gambler gets a pamphlet and a phone number.

How Sports Betting Advertising Normalizes Gambling Addiction

The relationship between gambling and professional sports has become so entangled that researchers are now calling for a complete reconsideration of the partnership. A 2024 commentary in Soccer and Society argued that the relationship between football and gambling in England requires urgent re-evaluation, not just for the integrity of the sport but for the protection of vulnerable populations who are being bombarded with gambling messaging during every match (Tandfonline, 2024). The UK government announced plans to crack down on gambling operator sponsorship of sport, acknowledging the degree to which gambling has been normalized through its association with athletics (GOV.UK, 2025).

But it is not just sports. Every news website with a "betting odds" section is normalizing gambling. Every media outlet that runs gambling advertisements is normalizing gambling. Every social media influencer who promotes a betting app is normalizing gambling. As I explore in my article on how culture trains you to befriend the enemy, the cultivation theory in media studies tells us that repeated exposure to a behaviour through media shifts public perception of that behaviour from unusual to normal (Gerbner et al., 1986). When gambling is embedded into the fabric of entertainment, news, and sports, it stops looking like a dangerous addictive activity and starts looking like a normal part of life. That normalization is not accidental. It is worth billions of dollars.

The Gambling Addiction Suicide Rate Nobody Talks About

Here is where the truth becomes genuinely dark. A 2024 study published in Public Health analyzed data from the National Violent Death Reporting System and found that gambling was a documented precipitating factor in a significant number of suicide deaths in the United States (ScienceDirect, 2024). A 2025 Swedish nationwide register study published in the Journal of Gambling Studies found that individuals with gambling disorder had substantially elevated mortality rates and suicide rates compared to matched controls, even after controlling for psychiatric comorbidity (Springer, 2025). A Turkish autopsy-based retrospective analysis spanning ten years found a consistent pattern of gambling-related suicides characterized by financial devastation and social isolation (Sahin et al., 2025).

The research published in 2025 in International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction demonstrated that gambling severity is linked to suicidal ideation, with mental health functioning serving as the mediating pathway. The more severe the gambling, the worse the mental health. The worse the mental health, the stronger the suicidal thoughts. It is a pipeline, and it runs in one direction (Springer, 2025).

And here is the part that should make your blood run cold. The institutions that profit from gambling know these statistics. The governments that tax gambling know these statistics. The sports leagues that accept gambling sponsorship know these statistics. And none of them are doing nearly enough to prevent these deaths. Because preventing gambling harm at scale would mean fewer gamblers, which would mean less revenue.

The gambling industry's business model does not care whether you live or die. It cares whether you deposit. And when you have lost everything, when your family's money is gone, when your friends have stopped lending, when you are standing at the edge of the darkest moment of your life, the machine does not pause. It does not send help. It sends you a "bonus offer" to keep you playing.

The Spiritual Dimension of Gambling the Industry Hides

From a psychological perspective, gambling systematically destroys hope through a mechanism called learned helplessness. Martin Seligman's foundational research demonstrated that when organisms are repeatedly exposed to uncontrollable negative outcomes, they eventually stop trying to escape, even when escape becomes possible (Seligman, 1972). As I explain in my article on why gambling is self-harm, compulsive gambling creates exactly this condition. You lose. You try to win it back. You lose again. You try a different strategy. You lose again. Eventually, your brain learns that nothing you do changes the outcome. Hope dies. And with it, your capacity to believe that anything, including God, could actually save you.

A 2021 study published in Mental Health, Religion and Culture by Grant Weinandy and Grubbs found that gambling is directly associated with increased religious and spiritual struggles. The more someone gambles, the more they experience conflict with God, feelings of divine abandonment, and a sense of spiritual emptiness. Gambling does not just take your money. It takes your faith (Grant Weinandy and Grubbs, 2021).

This is not a coincidence. This is the design. The enemy uses gambling to accomplish something far more devastating than financial ruin. The goal is to completely dismantle your ability to call out to the One who can actually save you. Gambling is engineered to break your sense of hope, your sense of worth, and your belief that God could love someone who has done what you have done. And then, when you hit rock bottom, when you are at the moment where surrender to Christ would transform everything, your faith and hope are so shattered that you cannot bring yourself to cry out.

Jesus is waiting for you at rock bottom. He has always been there. But the enemy's strategy is to make sure that by the time you arrive, you are too broken to reach for Him.

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." - John 10:10 (NIV)

Why Free Gambling Recovery Resources Matter

Now you understand why I give all of this information away for free. Every article on this blog is designed to do what governments, sports leagues, and media companies refuse to do: tell you the truth about what gambling is actually doing to you and give you real, evidence-based tools to fight back.

I am not funded by the gambling industry. I do not accept advertising from casinos or betting platforms. I am an independent recovery coach who built this practice because the system failed me, and it is failing you. The peer-reviewed research is clear. The spiritual reality is clear. Gambling is not entertainment. It is an industry that profits from your suffering and your destruction, propped up by governments that collect taxes on your pain and sports leagues that put betting logos on the jerseys your children wear.

Compulsive gamblers need to wake up to the fact that this is not just a psychological battle. It is a spiritual battle. The forces aligned against you are not just cognitive distortions and dopamine pathways. They are principalities and powers that have a vested interest in keeping you blind, broke, and hopeless. And the institutions of this world are, knowingly or unknowingly, serving that agenda.

How to Break Free from the Gambling Industry's Grip

But here is the truth they do not want you to know: you can get free. Not through willpower. Not through a government pamphlet. Not through a helpline that puts you on hold. Through certainty. Through a lived experience of knowing, deep in your body and spirit, that gambling will destroy you if you return, and that the God who made you has something infinitely better waiting for you on the other side. That certainty is what my entire recovery framework is built on.

The gambling industry has $71.9 billion worth of reasons to keep you addicted. Governments have billions in tax revenue keeping them silent. Sports leagues have sponsorship contracts keeping them complicit. But none of that changes the fact that Jesus Christ has the authority to set you free. And unlike every institution profiting from your pain, He is not asking for a deposit.

American Gaming Association. (2022). Illegal gambling revenue estimates.

American Gaming Association. (2025). 2024 Commercial Gaming Revenue Reaches $71.9B, Marking Fourth-Straight Year of Record Revenue. Press Release, February 19, 2025.

Department of Health and Social Care. (2023). Gambling treatment: assessing the current system in England. GOV.UK.

Gerbner, G., Gross, L., Morgan, M., and Signorielli, N. (1986). Living with television: The dynamics of the cultivation process. In J. Bryant and D. Zillmann (Eds.), Perspectives on media effects (pp. 17-40). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

GOV.UK. (2025). Government to crack down on gambling operator sport sponsorship.

Grant Weinandy, J. T., and Grubbs, J. B. (2021). Gambling with God: the effect of gambling on religious and spiritual struggles. Mental Health, Religion and Culture, 24(5), 437-449.

National Association of Administrators for Disordered Gambling Services. (2022). 2021 Survey of Publicly Funded Problem Gambling Services in the United States.

National Council on Problem Gambling. (2024). Helpline call data 2019-2023.

Riddle, K. (2025). Experts worry about a lack of addiction treatments as legalized sports betting grows. NPR/WCMU, March 22, 2025.

Sahin, H. C., Oruc, M. A., Boylu, M. E., Yaman, M. F., and Uzun, I. (2025). Gambling addiction and suicide: A 10-year autopsy-based retrospective analysis. Addicta: The Turkish Journal on Addictions, 12(4), 426-433.

ScienceDirect. (2024). Gambling as a precipitating factor in deaths by suicide in the National Violent Death Reporting System. Public Health, 235, 180-186.

Seligman, M. E. P. (1972). Learned helplessness. Annual Review of Medicine, 23(1), 407-412.

Springer. (2025). Suicide and Mortality in Individuals with Gambling Disorder and Matched Case Controls: A Swedish Nationwide Register Study. Journal of Gambling Studies, 41, 1041-1054.

Springer. (2025). The Mediating Role of Mental Health in the Relationship Between Gambling Severity and Suicidal Ideation. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction.

Taylor, W., McCarthy, D., and Wilbur, K. C. (2024). Online Gambling Policy Effects on Tax Revenue and Irresponsible Gambling. SSRN, June 6, 2024.

Wardle, H., et al. (2020). The Lancet Psychiatry: priorities for gambling research. The Lancet Psychiatry.

Washington State Gambling Commission. (2019). 2019 Problem Gambling Study.

Yogonet. (2025). UK gambling industry steps up outreach efforts amid tax hike discussions. July 29, 2025.

The System Was Not Built to Save You. This Program Was.

If you are ready to break free from an industry designed to keep you addicted, take the first step. Every article on this blog is free because the truth should never cost you more than gambling already has.