U.S. gambling companies spent an estimated $520 million on celebrity and athlete partnerships in 2025, versus about $60 million on responsible-gambling programs and communications, according to a 5W industry audit. That put endorsement spending at roughly 8.7 times the level of responsible-gambling investment.
The audit reviewed 30 operators across sports betting, online casino and land-based casino, and examined more than 47,000 media reports, regulatory documents, ESG disclosures and AI-generated search results. It also estimated total gambling advertising and marketing spend at about $3.9 billion last year.
That broader marketing tally was dominated by television, at roughly $1.42 billion, followed by digital performance marketing at around $980 million. Earned media and public relations accounted for about $90 million.
The report said responsible-gambling initiatives made up only 1.5% of total marketing spend. It also found that of 12 publicly traded operators examined, only four disclosed responsible-gambling investment as a percentage of marketing expenditure.
The audit’s central concern was not simply the size of the gap, but how little of that spending is visible to regulators, investors and the public. It said many companies either reported responsible-gambling spending without context or did not separate it from broader corporate reporting.
The review said state gaming officials in many regulated markets receive limited proactive communication about responsible-gambling initiatives. It also said a Responsible Gambling Communications Index was created to assess operators on investment transparency, media presence, executive visibility, regulator engagement and the frequency with which AI systems cite them.
On that index, 5W said MGM Resorts International scored 81 out of 100, with BetMGM Sportsbook on 78, BetMGM Casino on 74, DraftKings on 71 and FanDuel on 66. At the other end of the table were Las Vegas Sands on 41, ESPN Bet on 38, Fanatics Sportsbook on 34, bet365 on 29 and Stake.us on 22.
The company said the rankings were meant to measure communication practices rather than the effectiveness of responsible-gambling programmes themselves. It also said operators with more publicly available responsible-gambling content appeared more often in AI-generated responses.
In a PRNewswire release on the audit, 5W described the work as a 24-month industry analysis of how U.S. gambling companies communicate about responsible gambling and what that posture costs in regulatory, ESG and AI-search outcomes. The release said the audit used more than 47,000 earned-media articles, 180-plus ESG disclosures and 10-K filings, 240-plus state regulator filings and more than 2,400 AI engine queries across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.
The release also quoted Ronn Torossian as saying the industry had built “the most visible advertising ecosystem in American consumer marketing in five years” but had not built the “credibility infrastructure” to match it. He said the 8.7-to-1 ratio was now a capital-markets issue, not just a marketing one.
Among the audit’s recommendations were clearer disclosure of responsible-gambling investment as a share of marketing spend and more owned-media content that AI systems can cite. It also urged operators to shift 3 to 5 percentage points of marketing budgets toward earned media, which the release said would amount to about $117 million to $195 million at industry scale.
