The American Gaming Association’s Commercial Gaming Revenue Tracker published on December 9 has confirmed that despite most of November’s and all of December’s reporting still outstanding, 2021 commercial U.S. gaming revenue totals $44.15 billion, surpassing the $43.65 billion generated in all of 2019.

That 2019 total was the record annual haul for U.S. commercial gaming, meaning that 2021 has broken the record with effectively a month-and-a-half still to be recorded.

The upswing in gaming revenue has boosted coffers in 23 of the 25 states that host brick-and-mortar casinos, and six states — Colorado, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota – have surpassed their own annual state revenue records.

For the first 10 months of 2021, slot revenue is up 9.8 per cent over the same time-period in 2019. Revenue from table games dipped slightly by -1.2 per cent and sports betting soared by 359.3 per cent, due in no small part to the expansion of legal sports wagering to 32 states and the District of Columbia. Meanwhile, iGaming, legal now in six states, experienced a gigantic 644.6 per cent increase from the first 10 months of 2019.

On a month-by-month basis, October’s gaming revenue of $4.75 billion was the second-highest revenue total ever, trailing only the $4.93 billion generated in July 2021. October marks the eighth consecutive month that gaming revenue has reached $4 billion or more. Before 2021, that mark had never been hit in a single month.