In our editorial meetings, it sure seemed like prediction markets were all anyone was talking about in 2025. However, when looking at the most-read stories of the year, it seems like our audience might have been as burnt out on event contracts as we were sometimes.
Instead, the big draws came from the vertical that was drawing all of the criticism before prediction markets gained tractions: sweepstakes casinos. Three of the five top stories this year centered around the sweepstakes industry, while another comes from another vertical with its fair share of past controversies, daily fantasy sports.
But the thing you most wanted to hear about this year? Read my lips: it was the new taxes.
Here’s the countdown of our five most popular stories of the year:
5. Pragmatic Play presses stop on US sweepstakes gaming
Class action lawsuits against sweepstakes casino operators have been commonplace for years, with the vast majority of them swiftly sent to arbitration. However, a lawsuit this year bucked multiple trends. First of all, the plaintiff wasn’t a random customer, it was Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto. Second of all, the suit came after not just operators, but some of the major sweepstakes game suppliers.
Stake.US is the primary target of Soto’s lawsuit, but by naming Evolution and Pragmatic Play as co-defendants, she turned up the heat on games studios that had, to date, been happily serving both the regulated space and the sweepstakes gaming market. And it worked. Just days after the suit, Pragmatic Play confirmed it would no longer be serving the sweepstakes gaming market. In the meantime, Evolution is staying put but remaining cautious as states like California and New York pass bills that criminalize suppliers of sweepstakes casinos and sportsbooks in addition to the sites themselves.
4. ARB Interactive buys Publishers Clearing House
Long before someone had the idea to turn the concept of sweepstakes into sweepstakes casino, Publishers Clearing House was part of American culture. Announcing the winner of its $10 million drawing right after the Super Bowl became a regular traidition in the 1990s, but in 2025 the company filed for bankruptcy. Social plus company ARB Interactive swooped in and purchased the languishing company for $7 million, which raises the questions if a premiere sweepstakes brand and its database can be of use to a company in the sweepstakes gaming vetical.
The acquisition is not without hiccups. Past winners before the purchase complained that their promises of lifetime payment were not being honored. ARB Interactive knows it is a sensitive issue and is working to guarantee payments going forward, but it will be interesting to see what lies ahead for the brand after a rocky 2025.
3. Underdog exits New York…for a minute
When it came to regulatory pressure, 2025 was not nearly as rough as 2024 for daily fantasy sports, but there were certainly some watershed moments in watershed states. The California Attorney General opinion decrying all forms of DFS as illegal was a tough blow for the industry, but one that still has not produced any enforcement action.
What felt like a bigger blow initially was a settlement in New York that pushed Underdog Sports out of the state and cost the company $18 million. The company exited the state in March not because of illegal offerings but because the temporary fantasy license it was operating under, gained through the acquisition of Synkt, was not granted with the games it was offering listed.
But what felt like a big departure wasn’t exactly a mic drop. Just two months later, Underdog was back in the state, though not with the full complement of fantasy offerings it has in other states. Draft-style games are available to New York customers, but the peer-to-peer Pick’em game is not.
2. New Jersey makes the sweeps ban official
We’ll be honest, we are not sure why you were so interested in the Garden State over the number of states that enacted sweepstakes bans this year, but you were.
Perhaps it is because after it took roughly the length of a sitcom episode for both the Assembly and Senate to pass the bill only for it to sit idle for some time. The legislature ignored the please from the likes of the World Poker Tour and passed the ban on June 30. Gov. Phil Murphy did not sign the bill until Aug. 18.
If that felt like a long time, Gov. Kathy Hochul certainly one-upped him, with the New York legislature clearing its ban on June 18 and Hochul only getting around to signing it on Dec. 8.
1. The goalposts finally move on slot handpays
The budget bill, as budget bills tend to do, made hundreds, if not thousands of changes, but there were two changes to gambling taxation. One immediately drew the attention and ire of the industry. While pro gamblers and industry members expressed everything from concern to panic about the limit of gambling loss deductions to 90%, another change slipped in under the radar even though it was one the industry had been desperately fighting for for almost a decade.
There was some debate as to whether or not it even happened, but SBC Americas was one of the first to confirm that the measure made it into the budget. After 50 years, the minimum threshold to trigger a W2-G form for slot jackpots is going up from $1,200. Granted, it is only moving to $2,000, but there is a provision for it to scale with inflation, which is something the gaming industry has argued was necessary in order to modernize and align these payouts.
And it looks like both big changes are set to take effect on Jan. 1. The Internal Revenue Service released guidance about the slot W2-G changes in December and, with no movement on the legal front regarding the 90% deductions, those tax filings are going to start looking a lot different for gamblers when they file them in 2027.
