By Matt Caiola, CEO, 5WPR  

The numbers are now documented. The U.S. sports betting and online gaming industries spent $3.9 billion on marketing in 2025. Television advertising received $1.42 billion. Celebrity and athlete partnerships received $520 million. Earned media and PR received $90 million — 2.3% of the total. Responsible gambling programs received $60 million.

Those last two figures are the ones that matter most to anyone thinking seriously about where this industry is headed. The two channels that build long-term brand credibility, regulatory goodwill, and investor confidence are receiving a combined 3.8 cents of every marketing dollar. The channels that build reach — which this industry no longer has a shortage of — are receiving the rest.

This is the central finding of the Gaming Trust Index, 5WPR’s inaugural annual study of marketing spend allocation and brand credibility outcomes across the top U.S. sports betting, online gaming, and land-based casino operators. The data is sourced from Kantar Media, MediaRadar, iSpot.tv, and public operator financial disclosures. I want to make the argument directly.

The Market Has Matured. The Budget Hasn’t.

The case for heavy advertising spend was legitimate in 2019 and 2020. Legal sports betting was new. Awareness was the genuine primary challenge. Television, performance marketing, and celebrity campaigns were the right tools for that phase.

That phase is over. Thirty-eight states have legalized. The top five operators — FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, Caesars, ESPN Bet — control 78% of handle and are household names in every legal market. The competitive question is no longer who consumers have heard of. It is who they trust, who they return to, and whose license applications sail through regulatory review in the states still considering legalization.

Those outcomes are determined by credibility, not awareness. And credibility is built through earned media, executive visibility, responsible gambling communications, and the digital content infrastructure that shapes how your brand is described when people research it. Not through a television spot or a celebrity deal, however well executed.

The Celebrity-to-RG Ratio Is a Problem

The specific figure I want every CMO, CCO, and board member in this industry to sit with is the ratio between celebrity endorsement spend and responsible gambling investment. In 2025: $520 million on celebrity partnerships, $60 million on responsible gambling programs. Nearly nine to one.

I am not arguing against celebrity partnerships. They drive awareness and short-term acquisition metrics that matter. The problem is deploying that spend at a 9-to-1 ratio over responsible gambling in an industry with active legalization fights in California, Texas, and Florida, with ESG analysts scrutinizing every line item of publicly traded operator balance sheets, and with state gaming commissions and legislative committees watching how operators present themselves on player protection.

The operators who change that ratio — even modestly, moving from 9:1 to 5:1 — will be in a materially better position in every regulatory conversation over the next decade. The ones who do not will find that ratio cited against them at precisely the moments it is most costly.

Online Gaming: The Window Is Open and It Closes at Legalization

Online gaming — iCasino and iPoker, currently legal in seven states — generated $12.8 billion in GGR in 2025 and receives the lowest communications investment per revenue dollar of any segment we analyzed. New York, Illinois, Indiana, and Virginia are in active legislative consideration.

The 2021 Michigan launch established the pattern: operators with pre-existing earned media presence in the state achieved faster initial user acquisition than those who arrived with advertising budgets alone. The window to establish that presence in the next four expansion states is open now. It closes the moment those markets legalize and every operator arrives with a TV buy.

Building earned media infrastructure takes time. The operators who start now will have something no late arrival can purchase.

The Land-Based Casino Search Problem

One finding in the Gaming Trust Index that the sports betting conversation tends to miss: the major land-based casino brands — MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, Wynn Resorts, Hard Rock International — generate millions of monthly branded searches and have not built the owned and earned content to shape what appears in those results.

As AI-powered search tools become the primary channel through which consumers research brands, operators who have not invested in digital content infrastructure are ceding their narratives to third-party review sites, financial coverage, and regulatory reporting. The operator that moves first to own its search narrative will have a compounding advantage. Every quarter the others wait, the gap widens.

What a Reallocation Actually Looks Like

Three to five percentage points of the total $3.9 billion budget. That is $120 to $200 million redirected toward earned media, executive visibility programs, responsible gambling communications, and digital content strategy. It would not show up as a meaningful variance on a quarterly earnings call. It would show up in regulatory conversations, ESG analyst coverage, brand sentiment data, and the search results that determine how the next generation of gamblers first encounters these brands.

The gambling industry has built the most visible advertising ecosystem in American consumer marketing. The next five years will determine whether it builds the credibility infrastructure to match it. The operators who move first will define what the mature market looks like.

Matt Caiola is CEO of 5WPR, one of the largest independent PR firms in the United States. The Gaming Trust Index 2026 is available free at https://www.5wpr.com/research/gaming-trust-index-2026/