Offshore gambling operators still control most of the US online gambling market, even as more states expand legal betting and online casino access, according to a new report from market intelligence platform Blask. The company’s USA and Canada iGaming Landscape 2025: The Offshore Reality report estimates that the US online gambling market reached about $79.8 billion in 2025, making it the largest in the world by a wide margin.
Blask says unlicensed operators account for roughly two thirds of total US market volume based on its Competitive Earning Baseline, or CEB, a measure the company uses to estimate the revenue a brand should realistically capture based on its market presence. Canada adds another estimated $9.5 billion, meaning the combined North American market now sits above $90 billion.
The report’s main message is that legalization is helping, but not fast enough to fully dislodge offshore competition. Blask found that offshore CEB grew 3 percent year over year in 2025, while domestic brands grew 20.6 percent. Even with that shift, offshore operators still hold the larger share of the market.
The scale of the offshore presence is hard to ignore. Blask says about 80 percent of brands serving US players are offshore. Bovada leads the overall market by estimated CEB, while FanDuel and DraftKings remain the strongest domestic performers. The report says three of the top five brands in the US are unlicensed.
Where regulation is more complete, the legal market appears to perform much better. Blask found that six of the seven fully regulated states offering both online casino gaming and sports betting have shifted the balance toward domestic operators, averaging about 62 percent domestic CEB. Michigan ranked as the clearest success story at 75 percent, while New Jersey now captures about 73 percent of its market through domestic brands more than a decade after legal online casino launched.
The report also points to New Jersey as one of the clearest examples of legalization cutting into offshore demand. After legal sportsbooks launched in 2018, Blask says offshore brands including Bovada and BetOnline saw sharp declines in market attention that never returned to previous levels.
The pattern looks very different in betting only states. In markets with legal sports betting but no licensed online casino, Blask says offshore operators still dominate because players looking for slots and table games have no legal in state alternative. Those markets average 74 percent offshore, and only two of the 24 states in that category, Maryland and Arizona, have managed to push domestic CEB above 40 percent.
California and Texas stand out as the two biggest untapped markets in the country. Together, Blask says the states represent nearly $10 billion in CEB, all of it currently offshore. The report argues that until those markets move toward regulation, the demand will continue flowing outside licensed systems.
The report also shows that the US is not the only market with a major offshore problem. In Canada, Blask estimates the online gambling market at about $9.5 billion in 2025, with offshore operators accounting for about 59 percent of total volume. Ontario remains the standout example of an open market working, with licensed brands now capturing about 85 percent of the province’s online gambling market.
The broader takeaway is simple. Legalization alone does not erase the offshore market overnight. But the data suggests that full regulation, product depth, and enforcement can gradually move players into licensed channels. For lawmakers, regulators, and operators, that may be the most important lesson in the report.
Source note: This article was based primarily on Blask’s report, “USA and Canada iGaming Landscape 2025: The Offshore Reality,” and reporting by Steve Ruddock in Straight to the Point.
Last Updated: 5 days ago
