Unregulated Online Gambling Brings In $5.9 Trillion Yearly, GCI Report States

According to a new report from Gaming Compliance International (GCI), unregulated online gambling generated an estimated $5.9 trillion in global wagers in 2025. This sum is larger than the GDP of every country in the world except the United States and China.

Prediction Markets Contribute a Lot to This Number

The estimate covers the total wagering volume flowing through unlicensed sports betting, online casinos, poker, crypto gambling, and lottery platforms worldwide. GCI now categorizes the online gaming industry into three segments rather than two: regulated, unregulated, and a third category it describes as “unacknowledged.” This segment includes social casinos, sweepstakes platforms, pseudo-financial products, skins trading, TikTok-based contests, and, most significantly, prediction markets.

This new category encompasses products that mimic the core mechanics of gambling, such as stake, an element of chance, and a potential reward, without being formally classified as gambling under current regulations. GCI clumps prediction markets into that category, despite there still being a huge debate if the contracts they offer are considered a form of gambling or something else.

Prediction markets, which now carry an institutional valuation of $9 billion following Wall Street firm Intercontinental Exchange’s $2 billion acquisition of Polymarket in October, occupy a distinct category within GCI’s framework. They are considered neither regulated gambling nor unregulated offshore gambling. Instead, within the US, they are treated as financial products overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), while outside the country, they are classified as unregulated gambling.

Officials Comment on the Report

Ismail Vali, president of GCI, stated that the market has essentially fragmented at each level, and prediction markets are a prime example of this. In an earlier appearance on the On The Margin podcast, Vali outlined the evolution of prediction platforms, explaining that they emerged from fintech apps in the 2010s, which initially focused on assets such as Bitcoin and stock price movements. As the platforms evolved toward audience-generated content, the concept expanded into allowing users to wager on virtually anything.

Meanwhile, GCI CEO Matt Holt delivered a stark assessment of the report’s findings, saying the scale of the unregulated online gambling industry could no longer be ignored. He noted that, with an estimated $5.9 trillion in wagering volume, the sector had become one of the world’s largest economic systems while operating largely beyond regulatory oversight. 

Putting the Numbers In Perspective

Starting with prediction markets from the US, we will give an example with this year’s Super Bowl. According to Kalshi, one of the world’s leaders in prediction markets, it took in $1.2 billion in trade during the event. That’s about a third of the $3.1 billion in prediction-market trading volume about the Super Bowl that the GCI estimated.

But the numbers get even more jaw-dropping if we look at the world scale. For instance, the US’s nominal GDP in 2025 is estimated at roughly $30 trillion, while China’s economy stands at $19 trillion. No other national economy exceeds $5 trillion. Against that backdrop, the unregulated online gambling market represents the third-largest economic flow in the world.

In the end, the GCI argues that the regulated market accounts for just 22% of global gross gaming revenue, leaving licensed operators with a minority share compared with the unregulated sector, which controls the remaining 78%.