How Many Americans Gamble? Survey Data Compared

The Headline Numbers: 45%, 57% or 71%?

Three recent national surveys give three different answers to how many Americans gamble. Gallup’s 2026 telephone poll reports that 45% of U.S. adults gambled in the past year. The American Gaming Association’s 2025 online survey reports 57%, and the National Council on Problem Gambling’s NGAGE 3.0 survey, fielded in early 2024, reports 71%. Each figure belongs to its own survey. They differ because the surveys ask different people, in different ways, about different lists of activities. This article sets the numbers side by side with each survey’s period, mode and sample.

Gallup’s telephone result is the lowest and the only one with a long trend: 45% in 2026, against 64% in 2016, 63% in 2007 and 66% in 2003. The decline is concentrated in the most common activities. State lottery play fell from 49% to 31%, and in-person casino gambling from 26% to 14%. Online gambling is the exception, at 4% in 2026 versus 3% in 2016. Gallup’s online panel, asked the same questions in June 2026, returned 53%. Gallup notes that this mode difference may be due in part to phone respondents being reluctant to tell an interviewer that they gamble, so the size of the true decline is uncertain.

What Past-Year Gambling Means in Each Survey

Each survey defines participation in its own way. Gallup asks adults whether they took part in any of 13 listed forms of gambling in the past year, from buying a state lottery ticket to placing a bet in an online prediction market, and counts anyone who did at least one. The headline 45% is that net share, drawn from telephone interviews with 2,201 adults aged 18 and older.

The AGA reports that 57% of American adults participated in some form of gambling in the past year. Its sample is 2,001 registered voters aged 21 and over, so it excludes adults aged 18 to 20 and adults who are not registered to vote. The AGA is the gaming industry’s trade association. The NGAGE survey was commissioned by the National Council on Problem Gambling and conducted by Ipsos. It reports that 71% of adults gambled on at least one activity in 2024, and NCPG states that the survey is not a study of the prevalence of gambling addiction.

Two terms recur below. A percentage point is the simple gap between two percentages, so 45% versus 64% is a gap of 19 percentage points. A relative change compares that gap with the starting value, so 19 divided by 64 is about 30%. Mode refers to how interviews are conducted, either by a live telephone interviewer or through an online questionnaire.

The Data: Participation by Survey and Activity

Table 1 compares the overall past-year participation rate in each survey, and Table 2 shows Gallup’s activity-level telephone results for 2016 and 2026. Rates are percentages of U.S. adults.

Lottery play remains the most common activity in Gallup’s results at 31%, followed by in-person casino gambling at 14%. Sports wagering is less common in the telephone survey: 7% bet on a professional sports event and 4% on a college sports event. Gallup’s 2026 results also include two newer items, fantasy sports for money (4%) and online prediction markets (2%), which have no 2016 comparison.

The other surveys report activity-level figures on their own definitions. The AGA reports that 30% of adults gambled at a physical casino in the past year and 21% placed a sports bet. NCPG reports that 23% of adults made a sports bet in 2024, compared with 20% in 2018 and 26% in 2021, and that 22% made an online wager in 2024, compared with 15% in 2018 and 25% in 2021. These definitions are not identical to Gallup’s, so the figures are shown together for context rather than as a single series.

Breakdown: Who Gambles and Who Reports Problems

Gallup’s telephone survey shows participation rising with income. Among adults with household income of $100,000 or more, 54% gambled in the past year, compared with 45% of middle-income adults ($50,000 to $99,999) and 40% of lower-income adults (under $50,000). Men (49%) are more likely than women (40%) to gamble, and adults aged 50 and older (50%) more likely than younger adults (41%). Younger women, aged 18 to 49, are the least likely group at 35%.

The decline since 2016 is measured with a relative-change formula, shown below with Gallup’s figures.

where: current is the 2026 share; prior is the 2016 share.

Applied to Gallup’s telephone results, any gambling moved from 64% to 45%, a relative change of -29.7%. State lottery play moved from 49% to 31% (-36.7%), and in-person casino gambling from 26% to 14% (-46.2%).

On problem gambling, Gallup’s telephone survey finds that 3% of adults, and 7% of gamblers, say they sometimes gamble more than they think they should, and 9% of adults say gambling has been a source of problems in their family. NCPG’s NGAGE 3.0 reports that 8% of adults, almost 20 million people, experienced at least one of four potentially problematic gambling behaviors many times in the past year, up from 7% in 2018 and 11% in 2021. NCPG lists 1-800-GAMBLER as the National Problem Gambling Helpline.

Methodology & Limitations

Datasets used: Gallup, Fewer U.S. Adults Say They Gamble, published August 17, 2026 (accessed October 2026); American Gaming Association, American Attitudes Toward Gaming 2025, published October 30, 2025 (accessed October 2026); National Council on Problem Gambling, NGAGE 3.0 Key Findings and NGAGE 3.0 survey page, covering January to March 2024 (accessed October 2026). Every figure is reproduced as published, and all percentages are shares of adults unless noted. No figure was estimated or extrapolated.

The only calculations are the percentage-point differences, which subtract one published percentage from another, and the relative changes, which use the formula above and are rounded to one decimal place. Only NCPG’s 2024 participation rate is used. Its earlier waves are not compared here.

Limitations are substantial. The surveys differ in mode, sample frame, age floor, fieldwork period and the list of activities, so 45%, 57% and 71% are not directly comparable. Gallup’s own phone-versus-web gap of 8 percentage points shows that mode alone can move the result. All three are self-reports with sampling error: Gallup’s telephone survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, and the AGA’s is plus or minus 2. These surveys measure participation, not spending or losses, and they are not diagnostic measures of gambling disorder.

Key Figures at a Glance

Comparing the surveys directly shows how much method matters. Gallup’s web result (53%) sits 8 percentage points above its telephone result (45%). The AGA’s 57% is 4 points above Gallup’s web figure and 12 points above its telephone figure, and NCPG’s 71% is 26 points above Gallup’s telephone figure. For casino play, the AGA’s 30% for a physical casino is 16 points above Gallup’s 14% for in-person casino gambling, although the AGA sample is registered voters aged 21 and over. The table below lists the core figures.

Related Data and Next Steps

Participation rates describe how many people gamble, not how much they spend. For dollar figures, state regulators’ revenue and handle reports are the primary sources, and each is defined and dated differently from the survey percentages above. When new survey results appear, check the mode, sample frame, wording and period first, then compare like with like. The 45% telephone trend is the most consistent long series, while the web and trade-association surveys offer higher snapshots.

Sources & References

• Gallup — Fewer U.S. Adults Say They Gamble, telephone survey June 1 to July 19, 2026 and web survey June 2026 (accessed October 2026)
• American Gaming Association — American Attitudes Toward Gaming 2025, survey July 22 to August 8, 2025 (accessed October 2026)
• National Council on Problem Gambling — NGAGE 3.0 Key Findings, survey January 26 to March 20, 2024 (accessed October 2026)
• National Council on Problem Gambling — NGAGE 3.0 (2024) survey page (accessed October 2026)