US Adults Are Gambling Less, a New Gallup Study Says

According to Gallup, an analytics firm, U.S. adults are gambling less, with 45% of total respondents saying that they had gambled, down from 64% in 2016. The report interviewed 2,201 adults and stated that it has a 3% margin of error. Gambling Participation in the US Continues to Decline Activities such as lottery tickets have seen the biggest decline, with only 31% of respondents saying that they had bought a ticket, compared to 49% in 2016, which is used as the survey’s reference point, and points to a sustained decrease in overall gambling in the country. Casino gaming floors are much less frequented, with only 14% of respondents saying that they visited one, compared to 26% a year earlier, although sports betting has remained fairly unchanged over the years. Around 7% of respondents said that they were gambling on sports, compared to 10% in 2016, and this comes despite a momentous increase in sports betting activity in the nation, with the activity becoming more widely available. What this survey could be pointing to is an overall shrinking in the number of people who engage with sports gambling in general. The survey also confirmed some well-known truths about the activity, with a 49% to 40% split between men and women when it came to gambling. One notable increase – albeit a small one – is the increase (4%) of people who gambled for money on the Internet, compared to 3% in 2016. Horse racing betting has all but collapsed over the past ten years, with previously 6% of respondents gambling on the ponies, down to 2% in 2026. Participation in office pools on the World Series, Super Bowls, and other major events has also dropped from 15% to 7%. One of the suggested reasons for this is that gambling may not be the only entertainment game in town, with video gaming, alternative activities, and on-demand streaming also taking a bite out of traditional gambling. Deviation Between Phone Surveys and Online Feedback The decline in in-person casino gambling could be because of the rise of Internet gambling, although the percentage differences are too disparate to fully justify the withdrawal from brick-and-mortar gambling options. Gallup also took a look at the socio-economic factors predicting gambling behavior, with upper-income Americans, those with an annual household income of $100,000, turning out to be the most likely to gamble – 54%. The group of people least likely to gamble is young women – 18-49, with only 35% of this group participating in gambling, with older and younger men participating at similar rates – 51% and 47% respectively. One notable aspect of the survey is that Gallup ran two parallel ones. The data points used in this article were specifically taken from the results collected from the phone survey, but the online survey showed slightly different outcomes. For example, the people who reported buying a lottery ticket were 38% (not 31%) based on the web results; those who gambled in-person at a casino were 19% (14%), and people betting on professional sports events were 9% (compared to 7%).