Prof. Schlevogt’s Compass No. 11: Legitimizing gambling – a study of the ‘Liberal Warfare Toolbox’

According to George Bernard Shaw, the most popular method of distributing wealth is the method of the roulette table.

As a result of rapid deregulation and mesmerizing technological change, such a spinning round of fortunes has recently reached epic proportions in the US, where revenues from gambling (which is euphemistically called “gaming” by its respective lobbying associations) has exploded in a short span of time. Bearing in mind that the Irish playwright’s aphorism constitutes one of his “Maxims for Revolutionists,” considerable upheaval and possibly a powerful backlash, too, may thus well be in store for the so-called land of opportunities.

According to the American Gaming Association (AGA), commercial gross gaming revenue (GGR), which includes sales in the three verticals of traditional casino gaming, sports betting and iGaming (also called online gaming), increased from about $30bn in 2020 to $67bn in 2023 (the last year for which a full data set is available). The rise in GGR represents a growth rate of 122% over a period of only four years or a smoothened compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22%. Since gross gaming revenue, also called game yield, is the difference between the amount players wagered and their gains, it also constitutes the total amount lost by gamblers. Consequently, the above trajectory shows that punters’ losses have been increasing at a high rate. The stellar performance of the gambling sector continued in 2024.