The North American box office totaled $8.87 billion in 2025, which is still 22% below pre-pandemic levels. Recorded music revenue hit a record $11.5 billion. Live music like concerts and festivals brought in $18.51 billion. Meanwhile, book publishers tracked by the Association of American Publishers reported $14.6 billion for the year. And the U.S. museum industry generated an estimated $16.4 billion. Add it up and the total comes to roughly $70 billion, which is less than half what Americans wagered on sports.
“It fills that void, and it will crowd out other forms of entertainment, other forms of hospitality, for sure,” said Martin “Marty” Conway, an adjunct lecturer in Georgetown University’s Sports Industry Management program. Sports gambling, in all respects, has become more ubiquitous, and as a result, is becoming more accepted as yet another form of entertainment. “They’ve taken something that was just who’s going to win, and now you’re actually able to get involved in certain other events of the game. That’s a form of engagement as opposed to what we knew previously.”
and the total comes to roughly $70 billion, which is less than half what Americans wagered on sports.
ngl I joke about parlays and betting on things, but people actually use Kakashi and Polymarket and actually look at the Kevin Hart advertisements and do it.
This is probably why marketing is so arcane to me. I cannot imagine a product or a type of outreach I wouldn’t hate and go out of my way to avoid.
Also, this is likely driven be a couple whales. My dad knows a guy who spends 6 figures on sports betting to the point where they’ll send him phones and laptops for being a loyal customer. These people aren’t exactly going to drop 6 figures on a concert or a museum. I also wonder if the figure includes money that you gamble after you win. Presumably you don’t always lose, so you spend $100, gain $300 and then lose $400 have you spent $400? Because the point is to nickle and dime you down, not make you always lose.
“Wagered” probably obfuscates the amount and makes it a category error. Part of the mechanism of taking your money is cycling the money into and out of your account
The article actually goes into all of this with weird statistics that back up my assumptions m for example, losses are like 10% of wagers, 5% or betters absorb 95% of losses, this doesn’t include prediction markets and reservations so they estimate 300 billion in wagers total. it’s a neat article and I recommend reading it.
Especially for this little tidbit
A recent New York Fed study found credit card delinquencies among millennials and Gen Z have risen in states where sports betting is legal, evidence, researchers said, that some bettors are financing the habit with debt. A quarter of sports bettors now say they worry they cannot control their gambling, according to a U.S. News and World Report survey
Yeah, “wagered” seems like a bullshit metric. I’ll buy into a 6-12 poker game for $300 and several hours later I’ll leave up or down a couple hundred, but I’ll have “wagered” thousands over that time.
The amount the house takes would be a better number for gauging the size of the industry.
Coffeezilla had some related stats in one of his latest videos. Less about debt than diverting other assets to gambling, but has some clearer polling around the 2 minute mark.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
there have been court cases about whether winnings are offset by losses for tax purposes but i don’t remember any of the pertinent details
Hasn’t it always been? Stock market is basically gambling and you have to do it if you want to retire
Stocks have earnings from labor exploitation even if most finance bros don’t even care about that part anymore.
Betting/gambling is at best a zero sum game
At a negative EV, I would anticipate it being a negative sum game unless you count the house winnings in the equation
Well yea, it’s mostly scams (insert calvin and hobbes comic)
Blackjack is the only better than 0 odds game i know of, unless you count the stock market
Looks like we need to turn movies, arts, museums, and music into more forms of gambling!
I feel like sports gambling is probably fewer people spending more money. And that money is a lot easier to pry from people than someone having to physically go to a museum, theater, or concert venue.
Like if I go to a movie X number of times a year, that’s obviously going to be less money than being a gambling addict spending the same amount daily or every couple of days on sports bets. Obviously the money would be better spent on going to a movie, but it’s psychological engineering. So how much does this really say?
How trustworthy are the people interviewed in this? Because “an adjunct lecturer in Georgetown University’s Sports Industry Management program” does not sound like a neutral observer.
An adjunct lecturer is just an academic on a shitty precarious contract. The person is probably an expert in this shit with a PhD and everything.
Wouldn’t a “sports industry management program” be skewed to view sports gambling as a positive? It’s not like researching it, it’s specifically to teach people sports industry management. And the article is saying “look how massive the sports industry is”.
Nah, programmes with titles like that usually function as marketing slogans for something much more traditional, both to draw in know-nothing students and to appease managers and administrators by covering everything in nonsense buzzwords. And again, this is an underpaid academic on a shit contract. They probably don’t believe in everything the upper administrators say any more than any other low-rung employee believes the bullshit that their big bosses say. Sometimes a job is a job.
Or they might be a total foaming-at-the-mouth chud, fuck knows.
