In 2020, the gaming industry landscape looked remarkably different.
Legal sports betting was only two years old and operators spent enormous sums of money vying for customers. Cashless payments were a trendy new development that seemed on the verge of widespread adoption. And almost no one had heard of sweepstakes or prediction markets.
Flash forward to 2025: The number of sports betting operators has been winnowed, with clear winners, including DraftKings and FanDuel, now the market leaders. The adoption of cashless payment systems has progressed steadily but is still not widespread. And sweepstakes and prediction markets are currently hot-button issues in the industry that were largely unknown in 2020.
In five years, the gaming industry will likely reflect similar change, some not yet apparent.
CDC Gaming recently hosted a roundtable on what the gaming industry will look like in 2030. Three industry insiders took part: Dr. Laila Mintas, an entrepreneur and strategic advisor; Daniel Wallach, U.S. gaming law and sports betting attorney; and Anne Hay, PayNearMe Executive Vice President and CMO.
Mintas said it’s instructive to look back at where the gaming industry stood in 2020 before looking ahead. She recalled that operators were in the midst of a “gold rush” regarding the then two-year-old repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), and that “no one really cared about user acquisition costs. People were spending like there’s no tomorrow.”
In five years, Mintas says, expect chaos to continue.
“As of today, we have seven states in the U.S. that have online casino and I think this regulatory environment left a big gap in the market,” Mintas said. “That enabled the operators that you see that are now coming in and disrupting, if you can speak even from disruption, because the market is still so young. But you see crypto.com coming in. You see all the sweepstakes coming in. You see the prediction markets, like the Kalshi’s of the world.
“There’s so much going on right now in the market. I think in five years from now, or in the next five years, we will see a lot of legal cases and fights and about who gets what share of that big pie. And it will probably get pretty, pretty heated. And I think there will be new operators and new businesses coming in, trying to ban existing regulations, using loopholes, trying to regulate in a different way.”
Wallach said the repeal of PASPA paved the way for unanticipated actions that are now reverberating. He said that Native American tribes are now using the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act to advance online gaming; that daily fantasy contests have expanded to include player proposition bets; that sweepstakes have emerged, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is now the regulator for the sports prediction market.
The repeal of PASPA not only created a regulated marketplace but also incentivized some individuals and companies to look for shortcuts.
“We’re now redefining what a bet is, what a wager is, what is an entry fee, what’s a contest, what’s a game of skill, what’s a game of chance, what’s a commodity,” Wallach said. “It’s all part of a common thread of the significant financial upside associated with gaming, creating ingenuity.
“They call it innovation, but in many ways, it’s a workaround or a loophole that’s being exploited based on either actual or perceived gaps in the law. And I don’t know that this represents a safe opportunity for investment. I think there’s a lot of volatility in play here because each of these expanded areas, saved for tribal digital gaming, has attracted significant scrutiny from states and from courts, and it is a very uncertain investment climate. The one thing I do know is that there will always be something else. There will be something else to come in that we didn’t see today.”
Hay says the payments space is rife with legacy platforms that were “falling short” and that inefficiencies are abundant. PayNearMe has worked to rectify those shortcomings and foresees new payment types emerging in the near future.
She notes that PayNearMe consistently receives inquiries about using cryptocurrencies as a form of payment. Hay said that the recent FiServ announcement that it is launching a stablecoin for banks opens up a new avenue that players may embrace, especially since there are a lot of fraud and risk controls associated with the development.
“This payment has a potential to be faster and cheaper,” Hay said. “And it’s not even five years out — I think that’s going to be even sooner. And things like stablecoin also seem to have a tighter set of controls, because the banks are behind it. And so, I expect that will be favorable for regulators and things like that.”
The increased use of artificial intelligence in gaming also seems to be inevitable, although Mintas admits, “our industry is not the most innovative industry.”
‘But I think we will be like a target zone, because most of the gambling industry, at least that I’m dealing with, is online,” Mintas says. “So, it’s perfect. It’s perfect to be targeted for AI products.”
Hay considers AI to be the prototypical buzzword. Every company in the gaming industry is either using AI or discussing how to use artificial intelligence, but no one has figured out how best to deploy it.
She notes that PayNearMe is currently experimenting extensively with AI. Hay suggests that in the near future, companies should “lean into it” and hire experts instead of trying to grapple with AI on their own. There are indications, at least in the payments space, that AI will be beneficial.
“We’re seeing some promising signs where it’s helping operate or sort of increase those acceptance rates,” Hay said, “and ultimately just provide a better experience for players and removing some of those barriers to completing deposits or withdrawals.”
Sweepstakes and prediction markets, however, loom large on the horizon. While many states, including Michigan, Louisiana, New York, Mississippi, and California, have issued cease-and-desist orders to companies hosting sweepstakes games and prediction markets, Kalshi, notably, has resisted any impediments to doing business.
Kalshi, regulated by the CFTC, currently can operate in all 50 states, claiming it doesn’t offer gambling.
According to Wallach, Kalshi and other prediction market companies insist that because they are regulated by the CFTC, they are able to operate.
“I think under a traditional preemption analysis, I think the states do have the better argument,” Wallach says. “But I think the ultimate trump card here, no pun intended, belongs to the Trump administration, because even if the states win, which is maybe potentially in a year to two years of a dog fight in the federal courts, as long as Trump retains control over our Congress, the administration’s response to a loss in court could simply be to usher in statutory amendments to the Commodity Exchange Act, to make clear or to clarify that sweepstakes and commodities can include event contracts tied to real world.”
