LAS VEGAS — Boosted by online gambling and expanded sports betting, the U.S. gaming industry grew for the fourth straight year in 2024, with $71.9 billion in revenue, and the Las Vegas Strip remained the largest American gaming market, the American Gaming Association reported Wednesday.

But in a 25-minute state-of-the-gaming-industry webinar, the AGA warned that the rate of growth is declining, and the Strip saw revenue drop 4.4 percent from 2023.

Bill Miller, president and CEO of the trade group, repeated his call for rooting out illegal and unregulated operators that the AGA believes cost legal operators $44.2 billion in gaming revenue and shorted state governments by $13.3 billion in lost tax revenue.

The presentation included a statistical analysis by David Forman, vice president of research for the AGA.

“While certain regional markets saw revenue fall in 2024, outside of the Las Vegas Strip, the Nevada markets did quite well,” Forman said.”Downtown Las Vegas is now the 13th largest market in the country, up from 17. The Reno-Sparks area jumped two spots to become the 11th largest market in the country, and the Boulder Strip retained its spot as the 10th largest market.”

Miller emphasized the need for the government to crack down on illegal gambling.

“We recognize that legal gaming success makes us a target for illegal operators,” Miller said. “They try to profit off the reputation for responsibility that we’ve worked so hard to build, exploit consumer confusion between legal and illegal operators, run through regulatory loopholes, and as a result, threaten to undermine public trust in gaming as a whole. And that’s why at the AGA we’re engaging a constant battle against illegal gambling. We work to ensure policy makers and regulators understand the vast differences in the way we operate, the economic contributions we make and the communities we support.”

For the first time, the AGA also invited two other gaming leaders to participate in the webinar.

Jason Giles, executive director of the Indian Gaming Association, and Daron Dorsey, president and CEO of the Association of Gaming Equipment, offered perspectives on their respective specialties.

“In 2024, Indian Gaming generated over $42 billion in gross gaming revenues,” Giles said. “As mandated by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, these revenues are directly returned to our tribal communities and tribal citizens, not investors or shareholders.”

Dorsey said AGEM is in the process of learning how President Donald Trump’s trade and tariff proposals will affect gaming equipment manufacturers.

“Just like other industries, our gaming supplier sector is working to understand and manage how trade policies and tariffs will affect us, both in the United States and abroad,” Dorsey said. “A unique aspect of our global gaming supplier sector community is that we deliver gaming products and solutions in all regulated markets around the world. So our products, whether in finished form or in component parts, will cross borders, and in many cases do so many times.”

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