This year the American Gaming Association projects there will be $35 billion – yes, billion – wagered on National Football League games. To put that in perspective, that’s about the gross national product of Estonia.

Yes, wagering on football is big business.

According to AGA Senior Vice President, Strategic Communications Joe Maloney, there are three big wagering events on the sporting calendar: March Madness, the Super Bowl, and the NFL’s regular season.

“Our projection demonstrates a 33% increase over last year, when legal wagering was approximately $26 billion,” says Maloney in an interview with CDC Gaming, who attributes the increase to two reasons: the maturation of markets and new markets legalizing sports betting.

“Just by the sheer number of Americans adults being in legal states, it continues to grow,” Maloney says. “We have seen a full maturation of some of those states that came online in late 2023, and now in early 2024, North Carolina and Kentucky. Right now, 67% of American adults live in a legal wagering state.”

Confidence in sports betting in the U.S. also has increased. In a recent survey, 90% of bettors say it’s important that the sports book they wager with is legal and regulated.

“We’re continuing to migrate bettors out of the illegal market into the legal market,” Maloney says. “And increasingly that confidence comes with what we’ve known in the legal, regulated gaming industry: Americans increasingly view that walking into a casino, placing a few chips on a table, or deciding to walk into a legal sports book, or pulling up a legal, regulated app on their phone and placing a few bucks on a game, they are more and more seeing that as a viable entertainment option for themselves.”

Maloney believes regulated markets have done a good job in three areas: upholding the trust placed in them by jurisdictions; adhering to commitments to responsible gaming; and protecting the personal and financial information of bettors.

Unlike illegal markets, who Maloney says do not provide the same level of transparency and commitment.

“What those three things combined have demonstrated is, to the betting public, those are very, very important,” Maloney says. “There are the illegal actors that make zero investments in consumer protection and guarding your data safely, determining how your financial information is used. And then, they’re not partners to communities. They’re not remitting taxes.”

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