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Industry Primers

Bottom-up NAICS industry primers written for both public-market and private investors. Leaf industries are researched from the ground up; every group, subsector, and sector above them reads as a contrast across the industries beneath it.

2122 industries · 24 sectors · NAICS 2022

Researched with AI assistance from official U.S. statistics and independent sources, with citations on every page. Figures are not individually verified against pinned evidence — primers marked Evidence-verified are. Industry research, not investment advice. Methodology.

GroupNAICS 7132Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation

Gambling Industries (U.S.) — Industry-Group Primer (4-digit rollup)

NAICS 2022 code 7132 — Gambling Industries (NAICS = North American Industry Classification System, the standard code set U.S. statistical agencies use to define industries. A 4-digit code is an industry group — one rung above the individual industries beneath it.)

What this page adds. This industry group bundles two very different businesses that happen to earn almost the same revenue: casinos without hotels (code 71321) and everything else you can legally bet on that is not a casino, casino hotel, or racetrack (code 71329 — video gaming machines in bars, slot routes, card rooms, bingo halls, off-track betting, historical horse racing). The value of reading them together is the contrast: they split the money roughly 50/50 but look nothing alike in structure, ownership, or how an investor can touch them. This page leads with that comparison, then sizes the group as a whole. For company-level detail, follow the child primers.

1. Overview

NAICS group 7132 (Gambling Industries) is the part of the U.S. gambling economy the government files under "arts, entertainment, and recreation" — as opposed to the parts it files elsewhere. It captures the casino gaming floor that has no attached hotel and the neighborhood, non-casino layer of legal gambling. It deliberately excludes three of the largest forms of American gambling, which live in other codes: full-service casino resorts with lodging (NAICS 721120, Casino Hotels), racetracks (711212), and government-run state lotteries (public administration, NAICS 92). Tribal casinos, run by sovereign Native American governments, are only partly counted anywhere in the federal business statistics.[1][2]

For an investor the group is best understood as two economically distinct businesses that share one engine — the house edge, the small statistical margin an operator keeps on every wager once enough bets are placed. That margin turns into recurring, high-margin cash because the cost base (buildings, machines, staff, licenses, taxes) is largely fixed. It is also a discretionary business: gambling spend rises with employment and confidence and falls in downturns, and every operator is a price-taker on the one cost it cannot control — the state gaming tax.[12]

The industry's headline metric is gross gaming revenue (GGR) — the money operators keep from wagers before operating costs (total wagered, the "handle," minus winnings paid back to players). GGR is not the same as the receipts figures below, and neither is the same as the far larger amount Americans actually wager. See §3.

2. What's inside — the two children and how they differ

Group 7132 splits into two 5-digit industries. They are close to equal in revenue and nearly opposite in almost everything else.

71321 — Casinos (except Casino Hotels) 71329 — Other Gambling Industries
What it is Standalone gambling floors: slots, table games, sports books, riverboats and "locals" casinos — no attached hotel Non-casino, non-track gambling: video gaming terminals (VGTs) in bars/truck stops, slot "routes," card rooms, bingo halls, off-track betting (OTB), historical horse racing (HHR)
Share of the level — receipts ~$18.4B (≈50%)[3] ~$18.42B (≈50%)[1]
Share of the level — establishments 384 (≈11%)[4] 3,125 (≈89%)[4]
Revenue per establishment ~$48M — few, large sites ~$6M — many, small sites
Direction of travel Physically mature/consolidating; growth is coming from digital channels and new states, not new buildings Growing by policy — each state that authorizes VGTs/HHR/card games opens a greenfield market; a classic roll-up
Concentration (top-4 firms) CR4 18.5%; top-50 take 83.2% (HHI 207.6)[3] CR4 30.8%; top-50 take 70.9% (HHI 333)[1]
Who owns them Listed commercial operators, casino REITs (the landlords), private-equity/family owners, and sovereign tribes Mostly private: PE sponsors and family businesses, plus nonprofit bingo/charitable gaming; one clean public pure-play
How to invest ~a dozen operator equities + two REITs + suppliers/online — but few pure plays (most operators own hotels, straddling 721120) Essentially one listed pure-play (a route operator) + suppliers + racetrack/online adjacents

How to read the split. The two children earn almost the same revenue, but casinos do it from about one-ninth as many locations — a few large, capital-heavy properties versus thousands of small venues and machine routes. Casinos are slightly more concentrated at the very top by revenue count yet have a heavier long tail (their top-50 firms take 83%); "other gambling" has a higher top-4 share but a lighter tail, reflecting a bar-bell of a couple of big route consolidators plus thousands of tiny operators. Most importantly, the two are on different growth clocks: the casino floor grows (or doesn't) with the consumer cycle and the migration of play online, while the neighborhood layer grows chiefly when a legislature says yes to a new format.

(REIT = real estate investment trust; HHI = Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, a 0–10,000 concentration score; CR4/CR50 = combined revenue share of the top 4 / top 50 firms.)

3. Size (this level's rollup figures)

Our federal ground-truth statistics for NAICS 7132. Payroll figures are reported in thousands of dollars in the source; rounded here.

Metric Value Source (year)
Receipts (revenue) $36.84 billion Economic Census (2022)[3]
Firms 2,096 Economic Census (2022)[3]
Establishments 3,509 County Business Patterns (2023)[4]
Paid employees 134,287 County Business Patterns (2023)[4]
Annual payroll $7.04 billion County Business Patterns (2023)[4]
First-quarter payroll $1.85 billion County Business Patterns (2023)[4]
4-firm revenue share (CR4) 16.1% Economic Census (2022)[3]
8-firm revenue share (CR8) 26.0% Economic Census (2022)[3]
20-firm revenue share (CR20) 45.0% Economic Census (2022)[3]
50-firm revenue share (CR50) 66.4% Economic Census (2022)[3]
Concentration (HHI) 143 (unconcentrated) Economic Census (2022)[3]

The rollup is additive where it should be: the two children's receipts ($18.4B + $18.42B), employees (73,015 + 61,272 = 134,287), payroll ($3.48B + $3.56B), and establishments (384 + 3,125 = 3,509) sum to the group totals. Firm count is the one exception — 2,096 at the group level versus 2,127 summed across the children — because roughly 30 firms operate in both businesses and are counted once here.[1][3][4] At an HHI of 143 the group as a whole is very unconcentrated on paper — far below the ~1,500 the U.S. Department of Justice treats as the line for "unconcentrated." But that national number is misleading for competition, which is fundamentally local: scarce licenses, geography, and catchment areas mean an individual casino or route often faces few real rivals in its own market.

The undercount — read this before quoting $36.84 billion. This group is a slice of U.S. gambling, not the whole:

  • The big resorts sit elsewhere. Most large casinos have hotels and are filed under NAICS 721120 (Casino Hotels), so much of the Las Vegas Strip and most large regional resorts are outside 7132.[1]
  • Coverage limits and small/sovereign/nonprofit ownership. County Business Patterns counts only employer establishments with paid staff, so self-employed, informal, and nonprofit operators (charitable bingo, single-table card rooms) are under-captured, and tribal casinos — sovereign government enterprises that include several of the largest single properties in the country — are only partly reflected.[2][4]
  • The largest adjacent forms are booked in other codes. For scale: U.S. commercial gaming GGR was roughly $78.7 billion in 2025 (much of it in the casino-hotel and online codes), tribal gaming about $46.2 billion in fiscal 2025, and state lotteries on the order of $100+ billion in annual sales counted as government activity.[5][6][9] Against those, the $36.84 billion here is a minority share of the national gambling economy.

Also note: receipts are what operators keep, not what players wager. The handle — total dollars bet — runs many multiples higher. The stats file reports no industrywide handle, hold rates, margins, leverage, or growth forecast for this level; those are operator- and state-specific and are not invented here.

4. Investable universe (where value concentrates across the children)

Value in 7132 is split unevenly between the two children, and the public-market surface is much larger on the casino side.

  • Casino operators (public — 71321): roughly a dozen U.S.-listed names, though few are pure plays because most also own hotels and therefore straddle 71321 and 721120: MGM Resorts (MGM), Caesars (CZR), Wynn (WYNN), Boyd (BYD), PENN Entertainment (PENN), Red Rock Resorts (RRR), Churchill Downs (CHDN), Bally's (BALY), plus small-caps.
  • Casino landlords (REITs — 71321): VICI Properties (VICI) and Gaming and Leisure Properties (GLPI) own the buildings and lease them back to operators — a lower-operating-risk "landlord" layer that turns casino real estate into contractual rent.
  • The route pure-play (public — 71329): essentially one clean listed exposure to the neighborhood layer, Accel Entertainment (ACEL), the largest U.S. VGT route operator (~27,950 terminals across ~4,500 venues).[7]
  • Suppliers and online adjacents (both): slot-machine and content makers (Light & Wonder, IGT, Inspired Entertainment/INSE) and online operators (DraftKings/DKNG, Flutter/FLUT) sit alongside the group and compete for the same wagering dollar, but are classified in other codes.
  • Private, tribal, and nonprofit owners (largely not directly investable): PE- and family-controlled casino operators (Fertitta, Standard General/Bally's, Apollo-operated Venetian), Oaktree-backed route consolidator J&J Ventures on the "other gambling" side, family-owned card rooms, charitable bingo, and — the single largest slice of casino gaming by property scale — sovereign tribes (Seminole/Hard Rock, Mohegan, Chickasaw's WinStar), whose gaming is generally off-limits to outside equity.[7][8]

Tickers, multiples, and yields belong to those individual names and to the child primers (see 71321 §4 and 71329 §4); the group itself is only partly a stock-market sector.

5. How the money works

Both children run on the same core: GGR = handle × hold (hold = the share of wagers the house keeps), earned reliably across large volumes rather than on any single bet, against a largely fixed cost base — so incremental revenue drops heavily to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), and profits fall fast when revenue drops.[10][12] The gaming tax is the biggest non-negotiable cost and varies enormously by state, from single-digit percentages of GGR in Nevada to 35–50%+ elsewhere.

Where the two diverge is who owns the venue and how the split works:

  • Casinos (71321) own their floor. Many have also sold the underlying real estate to REITs and lease it back on long "triple-net" leases (the OpCo/PropCo model), converting owned property into fixed rent — which lowers upfront capital but adds a fixed charge to service through downturns.[16]
  • Route gaming (71329) places machines in venues it does not own and splits the proceeds. In Illinois, after ~92% of wagers return as winnings, the remaining net terminal income is divided among operator (~32%), location (~32%), the state (30%), municipality (5%), and equipment provider (~1%).[7][12] Card rooms differ again — they earn a rake or seat fee rather than a house edge — and HHR parlors keep a commission on handle.

The through-line: little labor per dollar of revenue, high incremental margins, and a state-set tax that can move the economics overnight.

6. Demand drivers

The two children respond to different levers, which is why the group is more resilient than either alone:

  • Casinos track the consumer cycle. Demand rises with employment, wages, and confidence and falls in downturns; the customer base is mainstream (an American Gaming Association survey found 134 million U.S. adults, 53%, had visited a casino in the prior year).[9]
  • The neighborhood layer grows by policy, not GDP. Each state that authorizes VGTs, HHR, or card games creates a greenfield market — Illinois built a multibillion-dollar VGT business from scratch after 2012.[12] Growth here is a legislative event more than a macro one.

Both are exposed to the same structural swing factor: the migration of play online. Legal sports betting is live in 36-plus states and online casino ("iGaming") in a handful, and whether digital complements or cannibalizes the physical floor and the local machine is the group's central open question.[10] A generational split reinforces it — machines and bingo skew older and local, online betting younger.

7. Regulation

Gambling is among the most heavily regulated consumer activities in the U.S., licensed state by state with no general federal license. Three frameworks span the whole group:

  • State licensing and gaming tax for commercial operators and route/card-room businesses — Nevada is the model; licenses are scarce, expensive, revocable, and the main barrier to entry (and competitive moat).[12]
  • Tribal gaming under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) of 1988, overseen by the National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC), with casino-style ("Class III") games requiring a tribal-state compact.[6][14]
  • Federal anti-money-laundering (AML) rules under the Bank Secrecy Act / Title 31, enforced by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) — Currency Transaction Reports over $10,000, Suspicious Activity Reports.[15]

Two live fronts sit mostly on the "other gambling" side: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) unsettled treatment of prediction-market event contracts, and a 2025 wave of state crackdowns on sweepstakes casinos and "skill" machines — both showing how fast the legal line can move. (AML = anti-money-laundering.)

8. Consolidation

Underneath both children the venue layer is highly fragmented — hundreds of casinos, thousands of bars, halls, and card rooms — but the operator layer is consolidating in both, for the same reason: high fixed costs of licensing, compliance, and servicing reward scale and density. On the casino side a handful of scaled operators dominate and keep buying, and the REIT landlords keep acquiring their real estate; a live example is Fertitta Entertainment's ~$17.6 billion agreement to acquire Caesars (announced 2026, subject to approvals), alongside Bally's move majority-private in 2025 and continued sale-leasebacks.[11][16] On the "other gambling" side, route gaming is a roll-up led by two players (Accel and Oaktree-backed J&J Ventures), and B2B suppliers are prime acquisition targets (Apollo's $6.3 billion IGT/Everi combination).[7][8][11] The group's low national HHI (143) blends both businesses and local competition — it should not be read as any single vertical's true market structure.[3]

9. Risks

  • Cyclicality. Discretionary demand plus a high fixed-cost base magnifies downturns — most acutely for casinos.
  • Tax and regulatory risk. States can raise gaming taxes, tighten or fail to renew tribal compacts, or expand supply; operators are price-takers on all of it.[12]
  • Leverage plus rent. Many casino operators carry both debt and, after sale-leasebacks, large fixed rent to service through a downturn.[16]
  • Cannibalization / digital disruption. Legalized iGaming and mobile sportsbooks can pull play from physical floors, VGTs, HHR, and bingo — structural, not cyclical. iGaming already out-earns land-based casinos in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.[10]
  • Geographic concentration. The neighborhood layer's leaders lean heavily on a few states (notably Illinois), and casino markets are license-bound and local.[7]
  • Gray-market whipsaw and litigation. Sweepstakes/skill bans and card-room/tribal lawsuits can threaten a whole vertical in a state overnight.
  • Declining legacy formats. Charitable bingo and pull-tabs are shrinking.
  • Measurement risk. Federal statistics miss casino hotels, nonemployer, informal, offshore, tribal, and government gambling — quote the $36.84 billion as a slice, not the market.[2][4]

10. How to invest & outlook

Separate the exposures — they behave differently and sit in different children:

  • Casino operator equities (71321): leveraged, cyclical exposure to gaming win, visitation, and digital growth — but watch for hotel-heavy names that blend into the casino-hotel code.
  • Casino REITs (71321): contractual, often inflation-linked rent under long triple-net leases, paid as dividends — lower operating risk, less upside.
  • The route pure-play + suppliers/online (71329 and adjacents): essentially one listed route operator for direct neighborhood-gambling exposure, valued on enterprise-value-to-EBITDA (EV/EBITDA) rather than yield, plus indirect, faster-growth supplier and online names. Thematic exchange-traded funds (ETFs) bundle the sector.

Private-market routes run through PE and family ownership, sale-leaseback and net-lease real estate, private credit, and management/development contracts — while tribal gaming and nonprofit bingo stay largely off-limits to outside equity. Whatever the vehicle, underwrite the license and market-access agreement before the growth story; the license is the moat. (ETF = exchange-traded fund.)

Outlook. U.S. gaming revenue has set records for several straight years, led by digital formats — but record industrywide GGR should not be extrapolated mechanically onto this group. The two halves are on different clocks: the physical casino business is maturing and consolidating, its growth shifting to digital channels and new jurisdictions rather than new buildings, while the neighborhood layer grows chiefly when legislatures authorize new formats — a policy bet more than a macro one. The best opportunities remain property-, license-, and state-specific, and the real estate underneath the casino floor has become its own income-oriented asset class.

→ For the full company-level detail, see the child primers: NAICS 71321, Casinos (except Casino Hotels), and NAICS 71329, Other Gambling Industries. This 4-digit page rolls those two up and draws out the contrast between them.

Sources

Drawn from the two child primers (71321 and 71329); renumbered for this page.

  1. U.S. Census Bureau. "2022 NAICS Definition and Economic Census 2022 — Other Gambling Industries (713290 / 71329): definition, illustrative examples, cross-references, coverage caveat, and concentration statistics." 2022–2025. https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=713290&input=713290&year=2022; https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022.EC2200SIZECONCEN?g=010XX00US&n=713290
  2. U.S. Census Bureau / NAICS Association. "2022 NAICS — 713210 Casinos (except Casino Hotels): definition and cross-references (721120 Casino Hotels; 713290 Other Gambling Industries; 711212 Racetracks); Gambling Industries coverage caveat." 2022. https://www.naics.com/naics-code-description/?code=713210; https://www.census.gov/naics/resources/archives/sect71.html
  3. U.S. Census Bureau. "2022 Economic Census — Establishment and Firm Size / Concentration statistics, NAICS 7132 and children (firms, receipts, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI)." 2022. https://api.census.gov/data/2022/ecnsize.html
  4. U.S. Census Bureau. "County Business Patterns: 2023 (NAICS 7132 and children — establishments, employees, annual and Q1 payroll); CBP Methodology (employer-establishment coverage); Nonemployer Statistics." 2023–2026. https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2023/econ/cbp/2023-cbp.html; https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/technical-documentation/methodology.html
  5. Kelly, Tim / Stateline. "State lottery ticket sales nearly double to over $100B." 2026. https://stateline.org/2026/04/09/state-lottery-ticket-sales-nearly-double-to-over-100b/
  6. National Indian Gaming Commission. "NIGC Announces $46.2 Billion in FY 2025 Gross Gaming Revenues" (and the IGRA framework). 2026. https://www.nigc.gov/nigc-announces-46-2-billion-in-fy-2025-gross-gaming-revenues/
  7. Accel Entertainment, Inc. "Record Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2025 Results (~$1.3B revenue; ~4,500 locations; ~27,950 terminals; Illinois revenue-share splits)." 2026. https://ir.accelentertainment.com/
  8. CDC Gaming. "J&J Ventures Gaming / Golden Route Operations (Oaktree-owned; ~26,000 machines; ~30% Illinois VGT market)." 2023. https://cdcgaming.com/nevada-gaming-commission-approves-jj-gaming/
  9. American Gaming Association. "Commercial Gaming Revenue Hits $78.7 Billion in 2025" and "American Attitudes Toward Gaming 2025" (134M adults / 53% visited a casino in prior 12 months). 2025–2026. https://www.americangaming.org/commercial-gaming-revenue-hits-78-7-billion-in-2025-driving-record-18-1-billion-in-gaming-taxes-nationwide/; https://www.americangaming.org/resources/american-attitudes-towards-gaming/
  10. Casino.org. "From Vegas Strip Shocks to iGaming Booms: How 2025 Reshaped US Casino Revenue" (iGaming surpassed land-based in NJ and PA). 2026. https://www.casino.org/blog/us-casino-revenue-2025/
  11. Caesars Entertainment. "Caesars Enters Into Agreement to Be Acquired by Fertitta Entertainment" (~$17.6B; announced 2026; subject to approvals); iGaming Business, "Apollo completes $6.3bn acquisition of IGT businesses and Everi" (2025). https://investor.caesars.com/news-releases/news-release-details/caesars-entertainment-enters-agreement-be-acquired-fertitta; https://igamingbusiness.com/strategy/ma/apollo-completes-acquisition-igt-businesses-everi/
  12. Illinois Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability. "Wagering in Illinois — 2025 Update (VGT net terminal income $3.09B FY2025; 35% tax; revenue-share splits)." 2025. https://cgfa.ilga.gov/Upload/2025_Wagering_in_Illinois.pdf
  13. Supreme Court of the United States. "Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association (striking down PASPA; opened state-by-state sports betting)." 2018. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-476_dbfi.pdf
  14. National Indian Gaming Commission. "Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA 1988; NIGC; Classes I/II/III)." https://www.nigc.gov/office-of-general-counsel/laws-and-regulations/indian-gaming-regulatory-act/
  15. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). "Casino Recordkeeping, Reporting, and Compliance Program Requirements (BSA/Title 31; CTR/SAR)." Current guidance. https://www.fincen.gov/resources/statutes-regulations/guidance/frequently-asked-questions-casino-recordkeeping-reporting
  16. VICI Properties. "VICI Properties Inc. Closes Sale-Leaseback Transaction With Golden Entertainment" (~$1.16B; closed 2026); Business Wire, "Bally's Corporation Completes Transactions With Standard General" (completed Feb 2025). https://investors.viciproperties.com/news-releases/news-release-details/vici-properties-inc-closes-sale-leaseback-transaction-golden; https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250207357507/en/
  17. Financial Models Lab. "7 Casino KPIs: Track GGR, Win Per Unit, and EBITDA (house edge, revenue mix, reinvestment/comps)." 2025. https://financialmodelslab.com/blogs/kpi-metrics/gambling-destination