I run one of the largest public relations firms in the United States. My job, and the job of everyone at 5WPR, is to help companies understand the difference between awareness and credibility  and to invest accordingly.

Most industries we work in understand this distinction. The gambling industry, which is spending more on marketing than almost any other consumer category in America right now, does not. And the data we just published proves it.

The Gaming Trust Index, 5WPR’s inaugural annual study of the gambling marketing landscape, documents what the U.S. sports betting and online gaming industries spent on advertising and communications in 2025: $3.9 billion in total. Television advertising: $1.42 billion. Celebrity and athlete partnerships: $520 million. Earned media and PR: $90 million. Responsible gambling programs: $60 million.

The two categories with the lowest investment generate the highest return on brand credibility. The two with the highest investment generate the lowest. This is not an unusual pattern  it appears in industries that grew fast on acquisition budgets and have not yet recalibrated for the retention and differentiation phase that follows. But in gambling, the stakes of getting this wrong are higher than in most categories.

 

Five years ago, the gambling industry had an awareness problem. Legal sports betting was new in most states. Nobody knew it was available, who offered it, or how it worked. The response  massive television buys, celebrity campaigns, stadium naming rights, digital performance marketing — was appropriate for that moment. You cannot build a customer base if nobody knows you exist.

That moment is over. Thirty-eight states have legalized sports betting. The major operators are household names. The top five — FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, Caesars, ESPN Bet  control 78% of handle. Any American who watches sports has seen their advertisements. Many have downloaded their apps. The awareness phase of this industry’s development is largely complete.

The marketing allocation has not caught up. The same channels that solved a 2019 problem are receiving the same budget share in 2025, in a market where the problem is no longer awareness. The problem is credibility. Retention. Regulatory goodwill. The brand equity that determines which operators are still standing in five years when the market consolidates and the advertising arms race becomes unsustainable.

 

Celebrity and athlete ambassador programs are a $520 million line item in the industry’s 2025 marketing budget. I understand why. These campaigns drive real short-term metrics: app downloads, social engagement, brand recall. When Tom Brady or Charles Barkley is associated with your brand, people notice.

 

What they are not buying is owned credibility. Celebrity endorsement is borrowed trust. It belongs to the celebrity. When the campaign ends, it goes back to them. The operator is left with the brand awareness and none of the brand equity.

Against that $520 million: the industry spent $60 million on responsible gambling programs. That is the ratio — nearly nine to one — that will define how this industry is perceived by regulators, investors, and the general public over the next decade. California, Texas, and Florida — the three largest states where sports betting is not yet legal  are watching. ESG analysts covering Flutter Entertainment, MGM Resorts, and Caesars are watching. The operators who change this ratio will be in a different conversation with every one of those audiences.

 

The Gaming Trust Index extends its analysis to land-based casino  a $67.8 billion market that rarely appears in sports betting conversations but has arguably the most acute communications problem of any segment we studied.

The major casino brands  MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, Wynn Resorts, Hard Rock International — generate millions of monthly branded searches. This is organic digital presence that most consumer brands would pay extraordinary sums to achieve. And almost none of those search results contain content that the operators themselves wrote or shaped.

Review aggregators. Financial reporting. Regulatory coverage. Wikipedia. That is the brand narrative that greets the next visitor researching whether to book a stay at the Bellagio or the Wynn. As AI-powered search tools synthesize that content into direct answers, operators who have not invested in owned and earned digital content are not just missing an opportunity. They are funding a narrative they did not write.

This is fixable. It requires a content strategy proportionate to the brand’s search presence. No major casino operator has built one at scale. The one that does first will have an advantage that compounds every quarter its competitors wait.

The argument I am making does not require gambling companies to abandon television advertising or stop signing celebrities. It requires moving 3 to 5 percentage points of a $3.9 billion budget toward the channels that build the credibility the industry’s next phase requires.

That is $120 to $200 million redirected toward earned media, executive thought leadership, responsible gambling communications, and digital content infrastructure. It is not a number that shows up as a meaningful variance in a quarterly earnings report. It is a number that shows up in regulatory approvals, ESG ratings, brand loyalty data, and the AI-generated search results that will determine how the next hundred million American consumers encounter these brands for the first time.

The gambling industry has built something remarkable: the most visible brand advertising ecosystem in American consumer marketing, built in five years from a standing start. The companies that figure out how to build the credibility infrastructure to match that visibility will define what this industry looks like in the decade ahead.

 

The ones that keep spending the same way will be the cautionary tale.

 
Matt Caiola is CEO of 5WPR, one of the largest independent PR firms in the United States. The Gaming Trust Index 2026 is available free at https://www.5wpr.com/research/gaming-trust-index-2026/