Other Gambling Industries (U.S.) — NAICS 71329

A short rollup primer. This North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) industry has exactly one child, so it is effectively identical to it — read this page for the level's own federal figures, then see the 713290 primer for the full detail.

1. Overview

NAICS code 71329 (Other Gambling Industries) is a five-digit NAICS industry covering commercial gambling that is not a casino, a casino hotel, or a racetrack. In plain terms: the machines and rooms most Americans gamble in day-to-day — video gaming terminals (VGTs) in bars and truck stops, slot "routes," poker and card rooms, bingo halls, off-track betting (OTB) parlors, bookmakers, and historical horse racing (HHR) parlors. It is the fragmented, neighborhood-level layer of the U.S. gambling economy [2].

For an investor, the useful lens is regulated customer access plus repeat wagering: the operator's ability to keep a small, engineered edge on high-frequency play after payouts, taxes, and partner splits. Public ways in are narrow (one clean listed pure-play plus suppliers and adjacents); the industry is mostly private capital and family businesses.

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

In the 2022 NAICS hierarchy, industry 71329 contains a single six-digit national industry:

Because there is only one child, 71329 and 713290 are the same population of businesses — the federal statistical agencies report identical counts at both levels. There is no aggregation or blending happening here; this page exists only because the classification carries a five-digit tier above the six-digit leaf. Everything substantive — business models, examples, and the sizing caveats — lives in the child primer.

By business model that single child spans: consumer-facing venues and routes (card rooms, bingo halls, OTB shops, VGT/slot routes placing machines across many small host businesses); device concessions; charitable/nonprofit gaming; with equipment and content suppliers sitting alongside but usually classified elsewhere [2]. Explicitly excluded and counted in other codes: casinos (713210 / 721120), racetracks (711212), non-gambling arcades (713120), government lotteries (public administration, NAICS 92), and tribal gaming (sovereign land) [2].

3. Size (this level's rollup figures)

These are the federal ground-truth figures for NAICS 71329. Because the level has one child, they equal the 713290 figures.

Two quick reads. Revenue per worker is high — roughly $300,000 of receipts per employee (2022 receipts over 2023 headcount, so approximate) — because machines, not staff, do most of the work. And concentration is only moderate: an HHI of 333 sits well below the 1,500 the U.S. Department of Justice treats as "unconcentrated," reflecting a bar-bell of a few large route consolidators plus thousands of tiny operators.

Receipts are not consumer wagering. The $18.42 billion is revenue retained by operators after paying out winnings — not the total amount wagered (the "handle"), which runs many multiples higher.

Undercount caveat (central to this code). County Business Patterns counts only employer establishments with paid staff, so self-employed, informal, and nonprofit operators (charitable bingo, single-table card rooms) are prone to under-capture; the Census Bureau's separate Nonemployer Statistics program covers businesses without payroll [4]. And the Census Bureau itself cautions that its Gambling Industries group does not fully cover U.S. gambling [2] — the largest adjacent forms are booked elsewhere: state lotteries (~$104.7 billion in fiscal-2024 sales, counted as government) [5], tribal gaming (a record $43.9 billion in fiscal 2024, on sovereign land) [6], and commercial casinos/sports betting/iGaming (a record $71.9 billion in 2024, in casino and online codes) [7]. So read 71329 as the neighborhood, non-casino slice of a far larger gambling economy. The supplied data do not include total handle, per-state share, or a NAICS-specific growth forecast; none is invented here.

4. Investable universe (where value concentrates)

Because the level is its one child, value concentrates exactly where it does in 713290. In public markets there is essentially one clean pure-play: Accel Entertainment (NYSE: ACEL), the largest U.S. VGT route operator (~27,950 terminals across ~4,500 host venues; FY2025 revenue ~$1.33 billion) [8]. Everything else listed is a supplier (Inspired Entertainment, NASDAQ: INSE) [10] or an adjacent racetrack/online name (Churchill Downs, NASDAQ: CHDN, for HHR exposure [11]; DraftKings, NASDAQ: DKNG, and Flutter/FanDuel, NYSE: FLUT, for online betting [12]). The dominant owners of the actual convenience-gambling layer are private — notably Oaktree-backed J&J Ventures Gaming (~26,000 machines, ~30% of the Illinois VGT market) [14] — plus family-owned California card rooms and nonprofit bingo [15]. Tickers, multiples, and yields belong to those names; the industry itself is not primarily a stock-market sector. See the child primer, Section 4, for the full table.

5. How the money works

Owners make money on the hold — the small edge kept from every dollar wagered — turned into recurring, high-margin cash. Key gambling metrics: handle vs. gross gaming revenue (GGR) (handle minus winnings paid out), win per terminal per day / net terminal income (NTI), and revenue-share splits. In route gaming the operator does not own the venue: in Illinois, after ~92% of wagers return as winnings, the remaining NTI is split among operator (~32%), location (~32%), state (30%), municipality (5%), and equipment provider (~1%) [8]. Because terminals and tables run with little labor, incremental GGR drops heavily to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA); the main capital cost is the machines and the main "tax" is the literal gaming tax the state can change. Card rooms differ — they earn a rake/seat fee rather than a house edge — and HHR parlors keep a commission on handle [11]. Full mechanics are in the child primer, Section 5.

6. Demand drivers

This industry grows mostly by policy, not GDP — each state that authorizes VGTs, HHR, or card games opens a greenfield market (Illinois built a ~$3 billion VGT market from scratch after 2012) [16]. Other drivers: convenience/proximity (gambling where people already are), discretionary spending (cyclical, softens when budgets tighten), substitution among lotteries, casinos, online sportsbooks, iGaming, sweepstakes and prediction markets, and a generational split — machines and bingo skew older and local, online betting younger. A caution: further legalization may get harder, not easier, as legislatures weigh consumer protection, tribal interests, and public opposition.

7. Regulation

Gambling is regulated state by state, and this is its most locally-governed slice — no general federal license; each state (and often municipality) sets licensing/suitability review, terminal caps, bet limits, and the gaming tax [16]. Hard-to-win licenses are the main barrier to entry and a competitive moat. Federal overlays include the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) for tribal gaming [6], the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) and the Wire Act for online payments/wagering [20], and Murphy v. NCAA (2018), which opened state-by-state sports betting [19]. Two live fronts: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) unsettled rules for prediction-market event contracts [21], and a 2025 wave of state crackdowns on sweepstakes casinos and "skill" machines — which removes gray competitors but shows how fast the legal line can move [17]. Detail in the child primer, Section 7.

8. Consolidation

The venue layer is extremely fragmented (thousands of bars, halls, and rooms), but the operator layer is consolidating fast — a classic roll-up, because per-machine servicing and licensing costs fall with density. Route gaming is a two-horse race at the top (Accel and Oaktree-backed J&J Ventures), and private capital is the dominant owner precisely because the cash flows are recurring and the licenses are moats [9][13][14]. B2B suppliers of machines, content, and data are attractive acquisition targets (e.g., Apollo's $6.3 billion IGT/Everi combination) [13]. The moderate NAICS concentration figures in Section 3 blend many activities and should not be read as any single vertical's market structure [1][2].

9. Risks

• Tax and rule changes — the single biggest swing factor; operators are price-takers on state policy [16].
• Geographic concentration — the listed pure-play and the leading private operator both lean heavily on Illinois [14].
• Cannibalization from online — legalized iGaming and mobile sportsbooks could pull play from physical VGTs, HHR, and bingo (structural, not cyclical). (Forward-looking judgment.)
• Prediction markets — CFTC-regulated event contracts could siphon sports-wagering demand under a lighter federal framework [21]. (Forward-looking judgment.)
• Gray-market whipsaw and litigation — sweepstakes/skill bans cut both ways [17], and the California card-room/tribal fight shows how a lawsuit can threaten a whole vertical in a state [15].
• Declining legacy verticals — charitable bingo and pull-tabs are shrinking [18].
• Consumer cyclicality, social license, and measurement risk — gambling spend falls when budgets tighten, expanded access invites responsible-gaming rules, and federal statistics miss nonemployer, informal, offshore, and government activity [4].

10. How to invest & outlook

To own this specific industry in public markets, Accel (ACEL) is effectively the only pure exposure — a route-operator roll-up valued on enterprise-value-to-EBITDA rather than yield [8]; Inspired (INSE) is the supplier angle [10], Churchill Downs (CHDN) the HHR adjacent [11], and DraftKings/Flutter the online adjacents that compete for the same wagering dollar [12]. Reserve share prices, multiples, and yields for those names. Private access is mainly through private-equity sponsors (Oaktree, Apollo) or direct ownership of a licensed route or venue — gated everywhere by state suitability review; underwrite the license and market-access agreement before the growth story.

The measured read: a durable, cash-generative, license-protected industry with a strong private-capital bid, growing chiefly by policy expansion and roll-up — but exposed, more than most sectors, to the two things it cannot control: state tax rates and the migration of wagering online. Because 71329 is a single-child pass-through, the full analysis lives in the 713290 primer — this page adds only the level label and confirms the figures carry through unchanged.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau. "Economic Census 2022 — Concentration of Largest Firms, NAICS 713290 (Other Gambling Industries)." 2025. (Receipts, firm count, concentration ratios, HHI — identical at the 71329 level.) https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022.EC2200SIZECONCEN?g=010XX00US&n=713290
2. U.S. Census Bureau. "2022 NAICS Definition: 713290 Other Gambling Industries (definition, illustrative examples, cross-references, coverage caveat)." 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=713290&input=713290&year=2022
3. U.S. Small Business Administration. "Table of Size Standards, NAICS 713290 ($40 million receipts)." 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
4. U.S. Census Bureau. "County Business Patterns, NAICS 713290 (establishments, employment, annual and Q1 payroll)"; and "Nonemployer Statistics (coverage of businesses without paid employment)." 2023–2026. https://data.census.gov/table/CBP2023.CB2300CBP?g=010XX00US&n=713290
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 Record $43.9 Billion in FY 2024 Gross Gaming Revenues" (also the IGRA framework). 2025. https://www.nigc.gov/nigc-announces-record-43-9-billion-in-fy-2024-gross-gaming-revenues/
7. American Gaming Association. "2024 Commercial Gaming Revenue Reaches $71.9B." 2025. https://www.americangaming.org/2024-commercial-gaming-revenue-reaches-71-9b-marking-fourth-straight-year-of-record-revenue/
8. 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/
9. The Nevada Independent. "Golden Entertainment selling Nevada, Montana slot routes for $322.5M." 2023. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/golden-entertainment-selling-nevada-montana-slot-routes-for-322-5m-will-focus-on-taverns-casinos
10. Inspired Entertainment, Inc. "Full-Year 2025 Results (Form 10-K; ~$304M revenue)." 2026. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001615063
11. Hoptown Chronicle / Harness Racing Update. "Historical horse racing in Kentucky: ~$9.6B FY2024 handle; Derby City Gaming commissions >$224M." 2024. https://hoptownchronicle.org/racing-breeding-shine-in-kentucky-as-sport-dims-across-america
12. Flutter Entertainment plc, Form 10-K (FY2024, U.S. revenue ~$5.8B) and U.S. sports-betting share reporting (DraftKings ~34%). 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1635327/000162828025009852/flut-20241231.htm
13. iGaming Business. "Apollo completes $6.3bn acquisition of IGT businesses and Everi." 2025. https://igamingbusiness.com/strategy/ma/apollo-completes-acquisition-igt-businesses-everi/
14. 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/
15. CalMatters. "Judge shuts down California tribes' latest bid to crush their casino rivals (SB 549; ~78 licensed cardrooms)." 2025. https://calmatters.org/digital-democracy/2025/10/california-gambling-casinos-cardrooms/
16. Illinois Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability. "Wagering in Illinois — 2025 Update (VGT net terminal income $3.09B FY2025; 35% tax)." 2025. https://cgfa.ilga.gov/Upload/2025_Wagering_in_Illinois.pdf
17. iGaming Business. "How 2025 became the year US states turned against sweepstakes casinos." 2025. https://igamingbusiness.com/legal-compliance/2025-sweepstakes-casinos-year-in-review/
18. SCCG Management / Lynchburg News & Advance. "Charitable gaming trends: North American charitable gaming down ~2.4%; Virginia charitable gross sales off >6%." 2024–2025. https://sccgmanagement.com/areas-of-expertise/2025/7/2/charitable-gaming-advisory/
19. Supreme Court of the United States. "Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association (striking down PASPA)." 2018. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-476_dbfi.pdf
20. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel. "Whether the Wire Act Applies to Non-Sports Gambling." 2011. https://www.justice.gov/olc/opinion/whether-wire-act-applies-non-sports-gambling
21. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. "CFTC Seeks Public Comment on Proposed Rulemaking Concerning Event Contracts Involving Enumerated Activities." 2026. https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9249-26