The Gambling Epidemic in America and Around the World: What the Numbers Show in 2026

Calling gambling an “epidemic” can sound dramatic. But the public-health concern is real: gambling is becoming more available, more digital, more heavily marketed and easier to repeat at speed. In the United States, sports betting has expanded rapidly since 2018. Around the world, smartphones are bringing gambling products to populations that previously had far less access.

The result is not that everyone who gambles develops an addiction. Most people who gamble do not meet criteria for gambling disorder. The issue is scale: when participation rises across millions of people, even a relatively small percentage experiencing severe harm translates into a very large number of lives, families and finances affected.

America’s gambling market is bigger than ever

The clearest sign of the expansion is money. According to the American Gaming Association, U.S. commercial gaming generated a record $78.72 billion in gross gaming revenue in 2025, up 9.2% from the year before. Sports betting alone generated $16.96 billion in revenue on $166.94 billion wagered, while legal iGaming revenue reached $10.74 billion.

Revenue is not the same thing as harm, and a growing legal market has benefits supporters emphasize, including regulation, consumer protections and tax revenue. But the size and speed of growth matter because they show how deeply gambling has moved into mainstream entertainment.

Sports betting is now part of ordinary sports culture

Pew Research Center found that 22% of U.S. adults said they had bet money on sports in the previous 12 months in 2025. The largest change since 2022 came online: the share who said they placed a sports bet through an app, sportsbook or online casino rose from 6% to 10%.

That changes the psychology of access. A person no longer needs to travel to a casino or betting shop. The bet can be placed from a couch, a bedroom, a stadium seat or a lunch break, often while the event is still happening.

Public attitudes are also shifting. In Pew’s 2025 survey, 43% of Americans said widespread legal sports betting was a bad thing for society, up from 34% in 2022. Forty percent said it was bad for sports.

Young adults are at the center of the shift

The age pattern is difficult to ignore. Pew found that 31% of adults ages 18 to 29 had bet on sports in the previous year, compared with 12% of adults 65 and older. Among adults under 30, 17% had placed an online sports bet. Among men under 30, 36% reported a sports bet of some kind in the previous year.

This does not mean young men are the only group at risk. Women gamble, older adults gamble, and gambling harm appears across income and education levels. But young adults are exposed to an unusually dense mix of sports culture, social media, mobile payments, promotional offers and fast digital gambling products.

College sports show how far betting culture has spread

The NCAA has repeatedly raised concerns about the effect of sports wagering on college athletics. In a 2026 release based on its 2025 GOALS study, 46% of Division I men’s basketball players said they had received negative or threatening messages from someone who bet on their game. This is harm reaching beyond the bettor to the athletes themselves.

The U.S. problem is larger than diagnosed gambling disorder

The National Council on Problem Gambling estimates that around 2.5 million U.S. adults — about 1% — meet criteria for a severe gambling problem in a given year. Another 5 to 8 million adults are estimated to experience mild or moderate gambling problems.

NCPG estimates the annual social cost of problem gambling in the United States at roughly $14 billion, including costs connected to healthcare, job loss, bankruptcy and the criminal-justice system.

Those figures help explain why gambling harm is often called a hidden addiction. There is no smell, bottle or visible substance. A person can lose money from a phone in silence, hide debt, chase losses, borrow, lie about spending and still appear outwardly functional for a long time.

This is a global issue, not only an American one

A major systematic review published in The Lancet Public Health estimated that 46.2% of adults worldwide had gambled in the previous 12 months — roughly 2.3 billion adults. It also estimated that 17.9% of adolescents had gambled in the previous year, equivalent to roughly 160 million young people.

Among adults globally, the review estimated 8.7% were engaging in some level of risky gambling and about 1.41% in problematic gambling. The Lancet Commission later estimated that roughly 80 million adults worldwide experience gambling disorder or problematic gambling.

The World Health Organization also treats gambling as a public-health issue. WHO notes that gambling can contribute to financial distress, mental ill-health, relationship breakdown, family violence, poverty and suicide risk, while harms can extend to people around the gambler.

Online casino and sports betting products deserve special attention

The global data suggests that risk is not distributed equally across every gambling product. The Lancet review found particularly high rates of problematic gambling among people using online casino or slot products. The Commission estimated problematic gambling among adults who use online casino or slot products at 15.8%, and among adults using sports-betting products at 8.9%.

These are rates among people who use those specific products, not the entire population. Still, they matter because the fastest-growing forms of gambling are increasingly digital, continuous and available around the clock.

Why digital gambling can feel different

• 24/7 access. There is almost no physical distance between an urge and a wager.
• Speed. Bets can resolve quickly, allowing repeated cycles of anticipation, win, loss and re-betting.
• Live betting. A single game can produce dozens of betting opportunities instead of one pre-game wager.
• Frictionless payments. Deposits can feel less concrete than handing over cash.
• Personalized marketing. Promotions, push notifications and odds can arrive directly on the same device used to gamble.
• Private use. Harm can escalate without friends or family seeing how often someone is betting.

Children and teenagers are not outside the gambling ecosystem

Commercial gambling is age-restricted in many countries, but exposure begins earlier. Britain’s Gambling Commission reported in 2025 that 49% of 11-to-17-year-olds surveyed had experienced some form of gambling in the previous 12 months, and 30% had spent their own money on at least one gambling activity. The survey includes activities that are legal for young people, such as some arcade machines, so it should not be read as “30% used illegal sportsbooks.”

More important is the direction of exposure. The same report found young people were more likely to encounter gambling advertising weekly online than offline. The line between gaming, gambling-like mechanics, sports content and financial speculation is also becoming harder for young users to interpret.

Gambling harm does not only mean losing everything

One reason the issue is underestimated is that people often imagine gambling addiction only at its most extreme: bankruptcy, total loss or crisis. Harm usually develops on a spectrum.

• Financial: depleted savings, debt, missed bills, borrowing, selling possessions or chasing losses.
• Psychological: anxiety, shame, irritability, obsessive thinking, secrecy and feeling unable to stop.
• Relationships: lying about money, conflict, broken trust and isolation.
• Work or education: distraction, poor sleep, missed responsibilities and reduced performance.
• Family harm: household money diverted from rent, food or children, with consequences extending beyond the person gambling.

The WHO specifically emphasizes that gambling harms extend beyond diagnosed gambling disorder. Family members, partners and communities can carry financial and emotional consequences even when the person gambling never receives a diagnosis.

Who appears most vulnerable?

There is no single profile of a person harmed by gambling. But the evidence highlights several groups and situations that deserve attention:

• Young adults, especially young men, because sports betting participation is particularly high.
• People using fast online products, especially online casino, slots and sports betting.
• People chasing losses, where the goal shifts from entertainment to trying to recover money already lost.
• People under financial stress, for whom a “big win” can start to feel like a solution rather than a gamble.
• People experiencing stress, loneliness or low mood, when gambling becomes a way to escape or change emotional state.
• Adolescents and young users exposed early, particularly as gambling-style products and advertising become normalized online.

Why 2026 feels like a turning point

The important story is not one statistic. It is the convergence of several trends: record gambling revenue, widespread sports-betting legalization, rapid growth of online betting, constant mobile access, normalization through sports media and increasing concern about harms.

The technology is also moving faster than traditional categories. Sportsbooks, online casinos, fantasy contests, loot-box-style mechanics and event-based prediction products do not all operate under the same laws or definitions, but to a user they can share the same basic loop: risk money, wait for an uncertain outcome, receive a result, repeat.

What can actually reduce harm?

No single tool solves gambling harm. The strongest approach is layered. That can include self-exclusion, blocking software, limits on access to money, support from another person, treatment when needed and a concrete plan for urges.

For someone who is already worried about their gambling, the most useful question is often not “Am I officially addicted?” It is: is gambling costing me more money, time, sleep, attention or peace than I want to give it?

If the answer is yes, you do not need to wait for a catastrophic loss before making it harder to gamble.