Digital Casinos May Actually Drive the Economic Impact of Sports Betting
New York, Thursday, 4 June 2026.
A June 2026 study reveals that the multi-billion-dollar economic impacts widely attributed to online sports betting are likely driven by broader access to digital casinos.
Unpacking the Revenue Realities
A newly circulated academic paper authored by Tim Bersak, Richard Gearhart, and Lyudmyla Sonchak-Ardan, written on May 31, 2026, challenges the prevailing narrative surrounding the economic boom of digital wagering [1]. The researchers utilized a Difference-in-Differences methodology to demonstrate that the state-by-state variation in access to online sports betting is heavily confounded with access to online casino gaming [1]. Crucially, the study reveals that across significant subsets of states where both forms of gambling are legal, the majority of industry revenues are actually generated by digital casino gaming rather than sports betting platforms [1].
Volatility in the Buckeye State
The financial volatility of standalone sports betting is distinctly visible in Ohio, which serves as a prime economic case study [GPT]. After officially launching legal online sports betting on January 1, 2023, Ohio became the fastest market in the United States to reach a $10 billion lifetime sports betting handle by June 4, 2024 [2]. Despite this rapid accumulation of wagers, the state’s monthly financial metrics have proven highly erratic [2]. For instance, while December 2025 generated $138.3 million in taxable revenue—an increase of nearly 150% year-over-year—the subsequent month saw January 2026 gross revenue fall 8% year-over-year to $99.6 million [2]. This represents a month-over-month revenue contraction of -27.983 percent [2].
Regulatory Pushback and Policy Shifts
As the true economic drivers of online gambling come under academic scrutiny, policymakers are already reacting to the perceived social costs of sports betting [GPT]. In Ohio, the regulatory environment has tightened significantly since the market’s inception [2]. On January 29, 2026, Governor Mike DeWine publicly labeled the 2022 legalization of sports gambling as the “biggest mistake” of his tenure, which began in 2019 [2]. Aligning with this sentiment, Ohio and U.S. regulators formally proposed a ban on utilizing credit cards to fund online sportsbooks on May 6, 2026 [2].