Predict. Now that’s a good start, because with U.S. giants FanDuel, DraftKings and BetMGM all set to embrace the prediction markets phenomenon of 2025 going forward, betting on binary outcomes–against fellow punters, and not the house–will, in the parlance of Our Times, continue to be a “Big Thing” in iGaming 2026.
How long this love affair with prediction markets will last is anyone’s guess. For the truth is that–despite the billions of dollars in investment and equally outsized hype–prediction markets to date are making no-to-very-little operating profit.
Nevertheless Kalshi Exchange, Robinhood, polymarket, et al, along with U.S. President Donald Trump’s very own Truth Social Predicts platform, have now very much entered the iGaming lexicon.
Big Apple Bites
Beyond the ongoing antics of the prediction markets, perhaps the biggest news of the American gambling year was New York City finally embracing 360 gaming with the licensing of three first-time casino resorts in the Big Apple.
New York Mets owner Steve Cohen’s Metropolitan Park, Bally’s Bronx development of a formerly Trump Organisation-owned golf course and Genting Resort World’s Aqueduct Racetrack were the hard-fought winners.
Elsewhere in The States, the battle to curb sweepstakes–and prediction markets–goes on, as does the increasingly bitter “phoney” war to bring fully-fledged legal online sports betting and iGaming to the two remaining significant jurisdictions of California and Texas.
Taxes
Across the pond, here in the UK–still the biggest regulated iGaming market in the world, conservatively worth £9.66 billion a year (US$13bn)–long-predicted government tax hikes on digital gambling finally landed, scheduled to take full effect in 2027.
The impact of British Chancellor Rachel Reeves hiking Remote Gaming Duty from 15 percent to 40 percent, effective April 1, 2026 and General Betting Duty on Remote gambling also from the current 15 percent to 25 percent, effective April 1, 2027, was instant; sending William Hill owner evoke PLC, formerly 888 Holdings, into an existential meltdown.
Hundreds of the UK’s iconic High Street Bookies, owned by other omnichannels, such as BetFred and Entain, now look set for closure in 2026 because of the massive tax increase – although horse racing, for the moment, seems safe.
Brazil Booming…But
In Latin America the biggest news of 2025, indubitably, was the final arrival of legal regulated online sports betting in Brazil, after years of stop-start politicking.
Yet going forward great uncertainty continues to mark this the world’s fifth biggest sports betting market; with deeply-entrenched illicit sites still operating and the proverbial Sword of Damocles of unsustainable tax increases hanging over the market.
Meantime across Asia churn and turmoil continued to upend the market in 2025.
Don’t Say “Uncle”
The fallout from a still simmering border war between Cambodia and Thailand led to the defenestration of pro-casino gambling Thai prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra when she made the mistake of calling Khmer strongman Hun Sen “Uncle”.
And with her political demise so too did any dreams of bringing six mega casino resorts to Thailand evaporate.
The sleeping giant of India also crushed any putative plans to bring fully-regulated gambling to its vast market of 1.4 billion people, now the most populous country on earth, with a swingeing, unrealistic tax regime that makes legal operation an impossibility. Good news then for India’s huge clandestine numbers rackets, cricket spot betting and other illegal sports betting scams.
Macau Maybe
Asia’s biggest gambling hub, indeed the world’s biggest gambling hub, of Macau, made its full comeback from the ravages of Covid-19 in 2025, with visitor numbers returning to pre-pandemic numbers.
But wither Macau in 2026–facing growing official China mainland government disapproval, with a slew of anti-gambling edicts, and the potential curse of embedded U.S. casino investment–is anyone’s guess.
Any strategic blow-out between the U.S. and China over the disputed island nation of Taiwan, which China believes to be a renegade province, is also likely to have a massive impact on the former Portuguese entrepôt.
Like the world at large, gambling too is facing a year of living dangerously.
Hopefully, iGamingFuture can help you navigate the pitfalls.
What this space!
