Online Sports Betting Statistics Updated November 2026

Human Written & Fact Checked · Updated

100 Illinois Sports Betting Statistics for 2026

You cannot count Illinois bettors by counting wagers. The regulator records activity and money, while original surveys measure reported behavior and attitudes among defined populations. This page keeps those measures distinct.

The current account snapshot is paired with a pandemic-era adult baseline and the latest available statewide youth report. Older research is labeled by its actual field period, and broad gambling questions are never presented as sports-only findings. Report-version dates are distinguished from first publication where the latter could not be established.

Headline figures

How does Illinois sports betting handle differ by category?

A stake total is a measure of betting activity, not income. The regulator's separate sport and parlay columns are essential for understanding what each category contains.

What do major sport categories contribute?

The online baseball result is showed above. Each remaining entry is a distinct channel and sport combination, instead of a unique-bettor count. American football is separate from soccer in this report. These categories do not include all bets containing that sport because parlays have their own column.

What do the other named sports contribute?

The same accounting definitions apply to these additional sports. Seasonal schedules can strongly affect a monthly snapshot, so this table should not be treated as an annual ranking. Retail and online refer to the wagering channel; they do not identify where bettors live or how many accounts they use.

How should parlay and other handle be interpreted?

Parlays combine outcomes and are reported separately from single-sport categories. The online parlay result appears above. The other column is also a report category, not an invitation to assign its stakes to an assumed sport. These figures should therefore remain in their published buckets. Reallocating them would require information about underlying bets that the table does not provide. The report also contains additional categories outside this main table, so the displayed subset should not be presented as a complete statewide total. Handle does not show whether operators retained a large or small proportion of stakes after payouts, and it is not a measure of state tax receipts.

How many wagers were reported through each channel?

Wager counts and dollars answer different questions. A customer can place many bets, so neither reported count nor handle reveals how many Illinois residents participated.

What do retail wager counts show?

These are the source's reported wagers, not visits or individual customers. The selected categories exclude the separate parlay count, which the original report displays with fractional values. We preserve the regulator's reporting units instead of infer a customer denominator or invent a new ticket-count definition.

What do online wager counts show?

Online baseball and tennis counts are showed above. The remaining observations use the same reporting period and source definitions as the retail entries. Larger counts do not establish higher average stakes or greater gambling participation among residents; both conclusions would require additional information about transactions and people.

Why keep motor racing separate?

The regulator places motor racing in an additional table instead of folding it into the main sport columns. The selected online count is reproduced below, excluding the separately classified motor-race parlays. This is another reason not to sum a convenient excerpt and call it the entire market. Category names and units should travel with every quoted figure. The motor-racing observation also does not identify the series, event location or bettor residence. Those details cannot be recovered from this aggregate alone. Comparisons with another state need to establish whether its report separates the same activities and whether it counts accepted, settled or adjusted transactions before drawing conclusions.

What did the original adult survey find about participation?

The adult assessment is a historical baseline shaped by the pandemic. It remains useful precisely when its survey period and activity definitions are kept visible.

How do general gambling and bookie responses compare?

The past-year overall estimate is showed above. General gambling includes activities beyond sports, while bookie responses refer to that specific survey item. The recency bands describe the last occasion of participation; they are not cumulative past-year percentages. The lifetime measure includes all those recency groups.

What did respondents report about online sports and fantasy?

The selected headline results appear in the takeaways. Remaining observations retain the survey's separate online-sports and fantasy categories. These are resident reports from the pandemic period, not licensed-operator transactions. They should not be read as estimates of current market adoption.

What did informal pools and sports with friends reveal?

  • 2021 Illinois adults, last office/friend pools including nonsport pools participation within 30 days: 7.1%. (Health Resources in Action, Mar 2022)
  • 2021 Illinois adults, last office/friend pools including nonsport pools participation between 30 days and a year: 14.0%. (Health Resources in Action, Mar 2022)
  • 2021 Illinois adults, last office/friend pools including nonsport pools participation over a year ago: 27.7%. (Health Resources in Action, Mar 2022)
  • 2021 Illinois adults, last other sports betting with friends participation within 30 days: 5.5%. (Health Resources in Action, Mar 2022)
  • 2021 Illinois adults, last other sports betting with friends participation between 30 days and a year: 8.6%. (Health Resources in Action, Mar 2022)
  • 2021 Illinois adults, last other sports betting with friends participation over a year ago: 19.1%. (Health Resources in Action, Mar 2022)

The source separates office or friend pools from other sports bets with friends. Pools explicitly include nonsport examples, so their figures cannot be described as purely sports betting. Each entry below is a last-participation band within the same weighted adult survey. Channels can overlap across people.

What attitudes did Illinois adults express about gambling?

Attitudes reveal the public context around betting, not the truth of stereotypes about gamblers. Keeping opinion questions separate from measured behavior avoids turning stigma into an evidence claim.

Which views about benefits, risks and stigma were reported?

The addiction and family-help embarrassment results appear above. The other statements were put to the same weighted adult sample. Agreement does not validate a statement about people who gamble. These questions concern gambling broadly and should not be presented as sports-only attitudes.

How did adults view gambling availability?

These responses describe opinions about the availability of gambling opportunities at the time of the survey. They do not establish the actual density of venues, the quality of regulation or a causal relationship with harm. The categories reflect the options provided to respondents and are reproduced without changing their meaning. Because the assessment took place during substantial disruption to ordinary activities, later changes in access could alter public views. The figures therefore remain dated to their original period. They are useful background for interpreting public debate, but they are not a current poll about a particular app, tax proposal or legislative measure.

How did family-help embarrassment vary across groups?

  • 2021 never-gamblers, agreement with embarrassment if a relative needed gambling help: 29.2%. (Health Resources in Action, Mar 2022)
  • 2021 non-frequent gamblers, agreement with embarrassment if a relative needed gambling help: 19.3%. (Health Resources in Action, Mar 2022)
  • 2021 frequent recreational gamblers, agreement with embarrassment if a relative needed gambling help: 13.4%. (Health Resources in Action, Mar 2022)
  • 2021 at-risk gamblers, agreement with embarrassment if a relative needed gambling help: 10.3%. (Health Resources in Action, Mar 2022)
  • 2021 problem-gambling category, agreement with embarrassment if a relative needed gambling help: 26.1%. (Health Resources in Action, Mar 2022)

The same attitude question was examined within gambling classifications. These are conditional subgroup percentages, not separate shares of the entire population. The problem-gambling categories follow the assessment's instrument and should not be treated as counts of clinical diagnoses. Differences can reflect other characteristics. The table does not establish why a respondent would feel embarrassed or whether that feeling actually prevented a family member from seeking help. The findings support a discussion about perceived stigma while leaving those causal questions open.

What did public-school students report about gambling frequency?

The youth survey measures a different population from the adult assessment. Its online and machine questions concern broad gambling, so they provide youth context instead of an underage sports-betting prevalence estimate.

How often was gambling at machines reported?

The machine question covers establishments such as bars, restaurants and gas stations as well as gambling venues. These results are weighted to the named public-school grades and do not represent every young person in Illinois. Frequency bands are exclusive response options. A zero is a rounded survey estimate, not proof that no student ever reported the behavior. The question does not establish legality, age checks or machine type.

How often was online gambling reported?

The weekly result for younger high-school respondents is showed above. The remaining estimates use the same broad internet-gambling item, which does not distinguish sports, casino games or other online activities. It would be misleading to label the entire category as sportsbook use. The report presents weighted percentages instead of administrative account counts. Students outside the public-school sample and missing responses require care when considering generalizability. The questionnaire was subsequently revised, so future comparisons should check whether both the activity examples and response options remained equivalent.

What unwanted experiences and overlapping modes were reported by students?

A reported unwanted experience is not a diagnosis. These youth questions illuminate feelings and control around gambling while keeping their limits and overlaps explicit.

What feelings and unplanned gambling did students report?

The older-grade feeling-bad result is showed above. These percentages use responding students in the named grade, both those already identified as gamblers. The questions ask about experiences during the preceding year. Feeling bad may describe different situations, and gambling more than planned does not by itself establish a gambling disorder. The survey does not attribute either response specifically to sports betting. These findings should therefore be quoted with their question wording and population attached. They can inform prevention discussions without implying that every respondent needs the same type of support.

How much did the unwanted experiences overlap?

The researcher's combined variable distinguishes students reporting neither experience from those reporting both. The individual questions can overlap, so adding their percentages would double-count some students. We reproduce the published overlap categories instead of calculate new figures from rounded values. The intermediate category in the original table is worded at least one even though the table displays both separately; that ambiguous category is not used here. Neither of the selected categories measures the severity or duration of an experience. They remain self-reports about the specified behaviors, not a clinical screening result.

How did machine and online gambling overlap?

The older-grade overlap result appears above, and the younger-grade result appears below. These source-reported figures identify students reporting both modes during the past year. They do not establish that the activities occurred at the same time or with the same operator. The underlying questions cover broad machine and internet gambling, not sports alone. This overlap is useful because mode-specific percentages cannot simply be added to estimate unique participants. The report's intermediate category label is ambiguous about exclusivity, so it is excluded from the inventory. Subsequent surveys should be checked for revised question wording before using them to claim that youth involvement increased or decreased.

Glossary

Methodology and sources

Every figure on this page comes from the organisation that produced it: regulators, statistics offices, public bodies, research institutes, and companies reporting their own data or surveys. Each one links to the original report or dataset and carries its release date. Survey results keep their population and fieldwork period, and financial figures keep the measure the producer used. Figures from different producers are not added together or ranked against each other. The page is reviewed monthly and updated when a producer releases newer data.