Americans placed $166.94 billion in sports bets in 2025, according to the American Gaming Association (AGA). That is the handle—the total value of wagers—not $166.94 billion that bettors spent and lost. Sportsbooks reported $16.96 billion in revenue, a much smaller measure.
Fortune compared roughly $166 billion in betting handle with about $70 billion in combined revenue across movies, music, books and museums. The comparison suggests betting has become enormous, but it puts wager volume beside industries’ revenue, so the figures are not an apples-to-apples measure of consumer spending.
What does the $166.94 billion sports-betting figure measure?
The AGA’s February 2026 annual results report says commercial, state-regulated U.S. sportsbooks handled $166.94 billion in wagers during 2025. “Handle” counts the total value wagered, including money that is later returned to bettors as winnings. It is not the amount sportsbooks earned or the amount bettors collectively lost.
The AGA also reported $16.96 billion in sports-betting revenue for 2025. The distinction matters: revenue reflects the amount retained by sportsbooks after paying winning wagers, whereas handle is the much larger flow of bets placed. The AGA is a gaming-industry trade association, so its figures describe the commercial market it tracks; they are not a comprehensive count of every kind of sports wagering.
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Is sports betting bigger than movies, music and museums combined?
Fortune’s October 2026 comparison puts 2025 sports-betting handle at roughly $166 billion, against roughly $70 billion in combined revenue across five entertainment categories. It lists North American box-office receipts of $8.87 billion, recorded-music revenue of $11.5 billion, live-music revenue of $18.51 billion, book-publisher revenue of $14.6 billion and estimated U.S. museum-industry revenue of $16.4 billion. Fortune attributes the book figure to the Association of American Publishers and describes the museum figure as an estimate.
On those figures, the betting handle is more than twice the combined comparison total. But this is a comparison of scale, not equivalent income: betting handle is gross wager volume, while the other amounts are industry revenues. It does not show that Americans spent or lost more on sports betting than they spent on those entertainment categories.
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How much of the betting handle becomes revenue or bettor losses?
Fortune reports that more than 90% of wagered money is returned to bettors as winnings. It estimates roughly $100 in average annual losses per adult from approximately $1,000 in legal bets. These are broad averages, not a description of what any particular bettor wins or loses; an average can conceal very different individual outcomes.
That is why handle should not be described as consumer spending or losses. The $16.96 billion AGA revenue figure and Fortune’s loss estimate answer different questions from the $166.94 billion handle total. They also should not be treated as interchangeable: one is an industry-reported revenue measure, while the other is an estimate of average adult losses.
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The AGA’s total covers commercial, state-regulated sports betting. Its State of the States summary says the commercial sports-revenue figure excludes tribal-casino sportsbooks and Florida mobile sports betting conducted as tribal gaming. Reporting and disclosure for those activities differ, so the official handle should not be mistaken for an audited total of every sports wager placed in the United States.
Fortune quotes College of the Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson estimating Florida handle at $5 billion to $10 billion, and says some tribal wagers are not publicly disclosed. Matheson also estimates that sports activity on prediction markets could add $50 billion to $100 billion. These are estimates, not official figures; they cannot simply be added to the AGA total as though they were measured on the same basis. Fortune characterizes a total approaching $300 billion as a possibility, not a verified national tally.
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How quickly has legal sports betting grown?
Fortune compares $6.6 billion wagered in 2018 with about $166 billion in 2025. That illustrates the expansion in reported betting volume, but the two figures do not establish that the same nationwide market existed in both years. Following the 2018 Supreme Court decision that allowed states to set their own rules, 38 states and Washington, D.C., had launched legal sports-betting markets by 2025, according to the AGA. State laws and market structures vary, and that figure is not a current state-by-state legality guide.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What does the growth mean for personal finances?
A large handle signals that sports betting has become a major commercial activity; it does not say how much a typical person bets, or whether betting is affordable for them. A bettor’s own financial measure is the money actually lost, not the total amount cycled through repeated wagers. The averages reported by Fortune should not be used as a budget or as reassurance that losses will stay near that level.
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Adjunct lecturer Martin “Marty” Conway of Georgetown University’s Sports Industry Management program told Fortune that betting “will crowd out other forms of entertainment, other forms of hospitality, for sure.” That is a view about the possible displacement of other spending, not evidence that every household has changed its entertainment budget. For personal planning, track deposits and net losses separately from handle, and set a limit based on money you can afford to lose rather than on an industry-wide average.
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