U.S. sports betting ad spend has fallen for three straight years, even as the industry keeps growing

When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting in Murphy v. NCAA in May 2018, sportsbooks moved fast — and so did their marketing budgets. Nielsen data shows total U.S. television spend on internet gaming, sports betting and related services jumped from $292 million in 2020 to $725 million in 2021, an increase of roughly 148% in a single year, as newly legal operators raced to acquire customers in one state after another.

That spending didn't keep climbing forever. Since 2021, sports betting's advertising footprint — measured in ad volume, not just dollars — has fallen every year the American Gaming Association (AGA) and Nielsen have tracked it, even as the legal market it promotes keeps setting revenue records.

States legalized fast — advertising followed the same curve

Two states offered legal sports betting at the end of 2018: New Jersey and West Virginia. By the end of 2024, that had grown to at least 21 states with legal online or mobile sports betting specifically, according to Legal Sports Report's state-by-state tracker — and that count doesn't even include states that only ever legalized retail (in-person) betting. Once those are added in, some form of legal sports betting existed in 38 states plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico as early as 2023, per contemporaneous reporting.

Then, three years of pullback

Sports betting's TV advertising volume peaked in 2021. Since then, the AGA's annual Nielsen-commissioned studies have recorded a steady contraction: TV ad volume was down 33% from that 2021 peak by the end of 2023, and down 44% from the peak by the end of 2024 — a decline of 11% and 17% in those two years respectively. Total sports betting ad spend across all channels followed a similar path, falling from a peak of roughly $1.4 billion in 2022 to under $1.2 billion in 2023, a drop the AGA/Nielsen study called "the first decline in spending since 2016."

2025 brought a partial exception: the AGA reported sports betting-specific ad spend rose about 5% year over year in 2024 even as ad volume kept falling — a sign that operators were buying fewer, likely pricier placements rather than simply spending less. Meanwhile, total gambling advertising spend (a broader category including casinos and lotteries) fell 15% in 2024, its third consecutive annual decline.

Despite the perception of saturation, sports betting is a sliver of the TV ad market

Sports betting ads can feel inescapable during football season, but Nielsen's own measurement tells a different story. In 2024, sports betting accounted for just 0.4% of total national TV advertising volume — less than alcohol ads (0.5%) and a small fraction of pharmaceutical advertising (13.6%). For every sports betting commercial that aired on national TV in 2024, there were more than four telecom/wireless ads and 38 pharmaceutical ads.

By ad spend rather than volume — since sports betting ads often run in relatively expensive live-sports programming — the category's share is a bit larger but still small: about 0.8% of total national TV ad spend in 2024, according to AGA VP of Research David Forman.

What's driving the pullback

Part of the explanation is self-regulation under pressure. In March 2023, the AGA updated its Responsible Marketing Code for AGA member operators — which include DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM — to ban "risk-free bet" language and prohibit new partnerships with colleges that promote sports wagering, with full compliance required by July 1, 2023. The update followed enforcement actions in states like Ohio, where regulators had already fined operators over similar claims. The timing lines up with the steepest part of the advertising decline, though the AGA/Nielsen studies don't isolate how much of the drop is attributable to the code change specifically versus market maturation, rising media costs, or operators simply needing less brand-awareness spend once a market is established.

The pullback also comes as the legal market's own growth is starting to slow in places. The AGA estimated $29.5 billion in legal NFL wagering for the 2026 season, essentially flat versus $29.4 billion in 2025 — the first time that figure hasn't grown. AGA President Bill Miller attributed the plateau in part to "backdoor sports betting" on prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, which operate outside state gaming regulation and, by the AGA's estimate, diverted over $1.3 billion in potential state gaming tax revenue in 2025–2026 — one more example of wagering activity that regulators are still working out how to measure, alongside the gambling-adjacent mechanics inside video games we cover separately.

Meanwhile, the legal market keeps growing

None of this means sports betting is shrinking. Legal commercial sports betting generated $16.89 billion in revenue in 2025, up 22.6% from the prior year, according to the AGA's State of the States 2026 report — part of $78.62 billion in total U.S. commercial gaming revenue, a record — see our full breakdown of global gambling revenue for how that fits into the wider market. Falling ad spend and rising revenue aren't a contradiction: once a sportsbook has already acquired most of the customers likely to sign up in a given state, heavy customer-acquisition advertising delivers diminishing returns, and mature markets can grow through existing users wagering more rather than new users being won over by ads.

Sports betting advertising and marketing are designed to reach broad audiences, and researchers have raised specific concerns about appeal to younger viewers. A 2024 study in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research found that gambling advertising on Twitter/X was rated significantly more appealing by children (ages 11–17) than by adults in a UK sample, with children more likely to report positive emotional reactions to the ads — the study estimates roughly 55,000 children in the UK are classified as problem gamblers. That data reflects a UK population, not the U.S. market this article otherwise covers, but the underlying concern about ad appeal to younger audiences is one U.S. regulators cite as well. If gambling is affecting you or someone you know, the National Council on Problem Gambling operates a free, confidential helpline at 1-800-GAMBLER (1-800-426-2537).

Methodology

State-legalization counts (Figure 1) come from Legal Sports Report's state-by-state tracker and reflect states with legal online or mobile sports betting live by the end of each calendar year; they exclude retail-only states, which is why the total is lower than broader counts (such as "38 states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico") that include retail-only markets. The TV ad volume index (Figure 2) is a Beacon Digital PR calculation, not an independently published index: it sets 2021 TV ad volume to 100 and derives 2022–2024 values from the year-over-year and versus-2021-peak percentage changes reported in the AGA/Nielsen 2023 and 2024 Sports Betting Advertising Trends studies (33% below 2021 by year-end 2023; 11% year-over-year decline in 2023; 44% below 2021 by year-end 2024; 17% year-over-year decline in 2024). The $292 million (2020) and $725 million (2021) dollar figures cited in the introduction cover a broader Nielsen category — "internet gaming, sports betting, and related services" — and are not directly comparable to the sports-betting-specific dollar and volume figures used elsewhere in this piece; they are presented as a standalone data point, not merged into the indexed chart. All dollar figures are in US dollars and reflect each source's own reporting as of its publication date; sources may later revise prior-year figures.

References

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3. Geller, K. (2026, January 5). AGA: Gambling advertising spend falls 15% during 2024, increases 5% for sports betting. Gaming America. https://gamingamerica.com/news/13023/aga-gambling-advertising-spend-falls-15-during-2024-increases-5-for-sports-betting
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7. Legal Sports Report. (n.d.). Sports betting states: Latest US legislation & bill tracker. Retrieved September 2026, from https://www.legalsportsreport.com/sports-betting/states/
8. Waters, M. (2023, March 28). New AGA sports betting ad code bans use of "risk-free". Legal Sports Report. https://www.legalsportsreport.com/109587/aga-tightens-up-sports-betting-ad-responsible-marketing-code/
9. American Gaming Association. (2026, May 12). State of the States 2026. https://www.americangaming.org/resources/state-of-the-states-2026/
10. American Gaming Association. (2026, September 4). AGA estimates $29.5 billion in legal NFL wagering; flat year-over-year growth as backdoor sports betting on "prediction markets" explodes [Press release]. PR Newswire. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aga-estimates-29-5-billion-in-legal-nfl-wagering-flat-year-over-year-growth-as-backdoor-sports-betting-on-prediction-markets-explodes-302870228.html
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