My daughter asked to decorate for Christmas this weekend. It was November 7. I told her it was too soon, that we still had Halloween candy, and that Mariah Carey hasn’t even been thawed out yet. She didn’t care. Target had already gotten to her. Somewhere between the dollar section and an aisle of inflatable reindeer, a six-foot marketing strategy did its job and now I’m the villain in my own living room.
That’s what good marketing does. It finds you early, gets in your head, and makes everyone who resists look slightly unwell.
Gaming has had a very loud year of marketing. Some of it was the reindeer. Some of it was a $12 coffee. It’s report card season and I’ve apparently become someone who grades things now, so here’s where I think we stand.
Prediction markets: A for effort, parent-teacher conference pending
Nobody spent like prediction markets this year. Through July, they put close to $200 million into digital ads and accounted for more than half of the sports betting ads consumers actually saw. Licensed sportsbooks, meanwhile, served about 14% fewer digital impressions in 2025 (AGA). My Instagram feed noticed before the AGA did.
The celebrity roster reads like a fantasy draft: LeBron, Jeter, and Eli Manning with Polymarket, Giannis with Kalshi. The messaging is confident enough to make a compliance team lie down on the office carpet. Kalshi ran ads telling people sports betting is now legal in California and Texas, while its lawyers keep arguing in court that it isn’t a betting platform. Both can’t be true, but only one came with a media buy.
It’s working, for now. It’s also why New York’s attorney general went to court last week to make Kalshi hand over its advertising and influencer records. When your marketing strategy and your legal strategy disagree, eventually someone asks to see the receipts.
Sportsbooks: Most improved, or most confused
DraftKings and FanDuel responded the way any reasonable older sibling would: by becoming the younger sibling. Together, they’re putting roughly $600 million this year behind their own prediction products and DraftKings is pointing its pitch at California, Georgia, Texas, and Florida, the big states where its sportsbook can’t operate.
I get it. If you can’t beat them, buy the costume. But it leaves sportsbook marketers paying to educate consumers about a category that’s eating their core product. One acquisition analytics CEO put it plainly this fall: If your 2026 budget assumed last year’s competition, “it’s already wrong.” Everyone is now bidding on the same guy in the same group chat, and he knows it.
The Strip: See me after class
Las Vegas lost about 3 million visitors in 2025 and spent much of the year getting dragged online over prices. The $12 Starbucks at Excalibur became a meme. The bottle of water became a meme. MGM’s Bill Hornbuckle eventually said “shame on us,” which is the most relatable thing a Fortune 500 CEO has said on the record in years.
Credit where it’s due: The Strip owned it. Rates came down, offers went up, and the messaging shifted to value. The real lesson is about speed. The internet wrote that narrative in about a week and the industry spent most of a year trying to edit it.
Locals casinos: Quietly on the honor roll
While the Strip trended for the wrong reasons, the locals market had a great year and didn’t make a fuss about it. Southern Nevada set its fifth straight gaming-revenue record in 2025 at $13.7 billion, driven by locals properties. Red Rock posted the highest quarterly revenue in its history by doing the least flashy thing imaginable: fair prices, easy parking, and somebody who remembers your name.
It’s the least viral strategy in gaming and maybe the most effective. Loyalty is still a marketing channel. It just doesn’t get a celebrity spokesperson.
Sweepstakes: Transferred schools
Sweepstakes casinos spent 2026 in retreat. Around a dozen states or something close to it have banned them and California’s law goes after the people promoting them, affiliates included, not only the operators. For anyone whose business runs on creator partnerships, that’s a new kind of risk. Your face on the ad now comes with legal exposure.
That should get every marketer’s attention, sweeps or not. Whom you promote is part of your brand and regulators have started reading the fine print.
Final grades
So where does that leave us? With an industry that’s very good at getting attention and still working out what to do with it. The loudest brands this year had the most legal uncertainty. The quietest ones made the most money. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, but I’m busy explaining to a small person why the tree stays in the garage.
She’ll win. Target always wins. But somewhere a locals casino marketer just sent a perfectly timed birthday free-play offer to a regular named Steve and honestly, that’s the campaign of the year.
