For years, playing lived on the outer edges of the video game business. It was boxed in by geography, hemmed in by regulation, and handled as culturally separate from mainstream gaming. Nonetheless, the wall has now largely come down.
The State of Video Gaming in 2026 by Epyllion’s CEO Matthew Ball argues that playing, particularly iGaming, on-line sports activities betting, and prediction markets, has turn out to be one of many largest forces redirecting how gamers use their money and time. As a substitute of working in parallel with video games, the platforms are more and more competing with them head-on.
There was a gradual change in leisure time towards interactive techniques that maintain customers engaged across the clock and, as a rule, put actual cash on the road. Video video games are not simply battling different video games for consideration. They’re additionally up in opposition to a fast-growing net of gambling-adjacent platforms engineered for fixed participation.
Avid gamers are taking part in much less, however not quitting
The report’s survey knowledge reveals that Individuals are taking part in video video games much less typically than they as soon as did. However most haven’t stopped.
Amongst U.S. adults, 46 out of 100 say they recreation much less regularly than previously. For adults between 18 and 45, that quantity climbs to 59 out of 100. Even so, gaming stays widespread. Total, 76% of adults nonetheless play. Within the 18–45 group, that determine jumps to 92%.
What’s taking place appears much less like abandonment and extra like compression. Gamers are shaving hours off their gaming time somewhat than chopping it out fully. The report frames this as a combat over discretionary hours, however not a whole cultural rejection of video games.
The excellence issues as most of the similar people who find themselves trimming their gaming periods are spending extra time on platforms tied on to playing. And the competitors isn’t passive leisure like tv, somewhat it’s interactive, social, and regularly transactional.
The place the online game trade and playing overlap
The sharpest overlap reveals up amongst males aged 18–34. They characterize simply 15% of the U.S. grownup inhabitants, but their footprint throughout playing classes is outsized.
In line with the report’s breakdown of standard customers, the group accounts for 37% of iGaming members, 46% of on-line sports activities bettors, 49% of energetic cryptocurrency merchants, and 43% of prediction market customers.
The depth of engagement stands out much more than the uncooked participation numbers as a result of in contrast with the typical U.S. grownup, males 18–34 are 2.6 occasions as more likely to play iGaming on line casino titles a number of occasions per week or every day. They’re 3.3 occasions as more likely to place sports activities bets, 3.6 occasions as more likely to commerce crypto actively, and three.1 occasions as possible to make use of prediction markets.
These usually are not occasional experiments. They’re recurring habits. And so they compete instantly with gaming periods for each consideration and disposable earnings.
Importantly, this similar demographic nonetheless over-indexes in conventional gaming, particularly on console and PC. This overlap is what makes playing’s rise so disruptive because it’s tapping into gaming’s core prospects.
Spending patterns have bolstered the swap. Since 2021, U.S. client spending on online game content material, software program, and providers has slipped barely, shifting from $52.49 billion to $52.30 billion, a $190 million decline.
Over that very same stretch, mixed spending on OnlyFans, on-line sports activities betting, and iGaming soared from $11.3 billion to $32.8 billion, which is a $21.5 billion improve in just some years.
The report attracts consideration to the truth that these nationwide totals are powered by concentrated person bases. Roughly 30 million Individuals account for sports activities betting losses, about 10 million for OnlyFans, 22 million for crypto buying and selling, 9 million for prediction markets, and 32 million for iGaming. The report notes that these customers “massively over-index to video gaming,” significantly on high-revenue platforms akin to console and PC.
In different phrases, the identical shoppers who traditionally drove gaming’s monetization are actually spreading their {dollars} throughout a wider array of interactive platforms.
iGaming progress much more pronounced in China
iGaming illustrates the shift most clearly. Outlined right here as real-money digital on line casino video games that permit gamers money out winnings, iGaming has moved from area of interest to mainstream at putting velocity.
In the USA, progress swung from –0.4% in 2021 to +12.0% by 2025. Exterior China, worldwide progress climbed from +10% to +30% throughout the identical interval, whilst some main markets maintained bans. By 2025, iGaming accounts for 21% of all U.S. online game client spend and is already twice as massive as the standard cell on line casino recreation class.
On a worldwide scale, authorized iGaming markets now generate $54 billion per yr in participant losses, up from $11 billion in 2019. The report factors out that this determine equals roughly 45% of complete online game spending worldwide.
On the design degree, the road between gaming and playing is getting tougher to see. Evaluating cell on line casino video games that don’t enable cash-out with iCasino slots, the report argues that the hole can really feel largely semantic, which is probably why US states have been trying to curb its rise.
In mechanics, design, and IP, there’s little distinction between ‘cell gaming’ slots and ‘iCasino’ slots. And if a participant’s $20 goes in and by no means returns, how completely different is it?
The State of Video Gaming in 2026
This has revived long-running debates over monetization in video games. Whether or not cash disappears via randomized loot systems or via an specific wager, the financial outcome for the player may look similar. What differs is the regulation and the velocity at which funds can movement again out.
Sports activities betting reveals the same trajectory. World internet participant losses reached $69.7 billion in 2025. In the USA alone, losses surpassed $17 billion, a 35-fold improve from 2019. As extra states legalize the apply, annual U.S. progress continues at roughly 35%.
Even in states the place entry stays restricted, each iGaming and sports activities betting are scaling swiftly. Regardless of being authorized in solely seven states, iGaming has already grown to twice the dimensions of the nationwide cell on line casino recreation class.
Prediction markets are smaller in complete {dollars} however heavy in time calls for. Within the fourth quarter alone, customers positioned round 1.5 million bets per day, with a mean notional worth of $300 per wager. These platforms typically require analysis, fixed monitoring, and social dialogue, hours which may as soon as have gone to gaming.
A structural shift in consideration from the online game sector to playing
The report finally argues that the core constraint is time. Leisure hours are finite, and extra platforms are competing for them.
Because the report places it: “Video gaming’s post-pandemic downside isn’t that gamers select to look at TikTok as an alternative of purchase a AAA recreation, or subscribe to OnlyFans as an alternative of shopping for a PlayStation; it’s that on a Friday night, gamers are inserting a rising share of their time and spend elsewhere.”
Push notifications, reside odds, quickly updating markets, and social feeds maintain playing apps in fixed rotation. They floor throughout the identical prime social home windows that after belonged to multiplayer periods or new recreation launches.
Taken collectively, the info suggests one thing deeper than a cyclical dip. Playing has embedded itself inside the identical behavioral loops, demographics, and monetization patterns that fueled gaming’s rise over the previous twenty years.
For recreation publishers, the problem is not simply constructing higher titles, however to compete with techniques explicitly constructed to monetize consideration constantly, legally, and at scale. In that surroundings, playing is not a facet class.
It’s one in every of gaming’s closest rivals.
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