New Jersey Online Casino Hits Record as Sportsbook Net Win Falls 17% and Kalshi Scales

New Jersey's Division of Gaming Enforcement reported May 2026 gaming revenue on June 17. Online casino set an all-time monthly record while the online sportsbook segment fell on both handle and net win. Total statewide gaming revenue reached $627.1 million, up 2% year on year. Atlantic City's nine casinos won $265.6 million on their in-person floors, up just 0.1% (a gain of $332,135), after a cold and wet pre-Memorial Day weekend. Temperatures ran from a high of 54F with light rain on Saturday May 23 to 72F on Memorial Day Monday, May 25. Six of the nine casinos declined year on year.

iGaming won $276.2 million, an all-time monthly high, up 12% and $29.4 million more than May 2025. FanDuel, operating under the Golden Nugget license, led on $64 million, ahead of DraftKings (via Resorts) on $47 million and BetMGM on $34.6 million. On the floors, Borgata led with $72.9 million, Hard Rock followed on $49.9 million, Ocean Casino took $46.8 million (up 11%) and Bally's reported $12.5 million (up 6%). Devin O'Connor of Casino.org attributed the divergence in part to prediction markets that began offering sports event trading in late 2025.

The split is not a one-month event. New Jersey closed 2025 with a record $6.98 billion in total gaming revenue, up 10.8% from $6.3 billion in 2024. Online casino revenue rose 22% to $2.91 billion and, for the first time in state history, out-earned the $2.89 billion land-based floors. Sports betting revenue reached $1.18 billion for the year, up 7.5%, but full-year handle of $12.23 billion fell 4.2%. The state collected $1.01 billion in gaming taxes, including $581.9 million from iGaming and $209.1 million from sports betting.

The sportsbook squeeze

The May sportsbook figures show the pressure. Online handle of $888.3 million was down 9%, meaning bettors wagered $83.8 million less than a year earlier, and net win of $85.2 million fell 17%, a loss of $17.3 million. Year to date, online handle of $4.58 billion ran 8.9% behind the prior year, $450.4 million fewer bets.

The competition increasingly sits outside the state licensing system. Kalshi, the largest CFTC-regulated sports prediction market, traded about $10.44 billion on sports in May 2026, roughly 60 times its election trading. The platform crossed $100 billion in lifetime notional volume in mid-June, reaching an estimated $102.3 billion entering the week of June 16 and running about $9 billion ahead of rival Polymarket. It posted its first billion-dollar days on June 13 ($1.22 billion) and June 14 ($1.24 billion), driven by the NBA Finals, the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the Stanley Cup Finals and a UFC card. Pew Research Center data covering July 2024 through April 2026 found sports derivatives drove about 80% of Kalshi volume.

The growth curve is steep. A December 2025 Foresight Ventures report put Kalshi's annualized trading volume at $40 billion to $50 billion, up from $300 million the prior August. By May 2026, annualized volume had reached roughly $178 billion, up from $52 billion six months earlier, with annualized revenue above $1.5 billion. Kalshi's 2025 fee revenue was $263.5 million, 89% of it from sports, on $22.9 billion of full-year volume. For comparison, US legal sportsbooks handled roughly $14 billion per month on average across 2025, and Kalshi's US sports betting market share grew from about 1.5% for 2025 to nearly 3% during September to November, placing it around seventh among US sports betting operators.

Legal ground and the precedent

The legal footing favors the newcomers for now. On April 6, 2026, a divided Third Circuit panel affirmed a preliminary injunction barring New Jersey from enforcing its gambling laws against Kalshi, holding that the company's sports event contracts are "swaps" under the Commodity Exchange Act and that the CFTC's jurisdiction likely preempts state regulation. The 2-1 opinion was written by Judge David J. Porter and joined by Chief Judge Michael A. Chagares. In dissent, Judge Jane Roth wrote that Kalshi's products are "virtually indistinguishable from the betting products available on online sportsbooks" and argued the presumption against preemption should apply with "special force" in gambling regulation. New Jersey's Division of Gaming Enforcement had earlier sent cease-and-desist letters to Kalshi and Robinhood. The ruling was a preliminary finding, not a decision on the merits, and the case returns to the district court while the CFTC's own event-contract rulemaking continues. It was the first federal appellate ruling that the CEA preempts state gambling law for sports event contracts on registered contract markets, and it follows the broader fight we tracked in the prediction markets case headed for the Supreme Court.

For affiliates, the structural point is reportable from the numbers. Regulated US sportsbooks, long a core affiliate product through state-licensed revenue-share and CPA programs, are ceding handle to CFTC-regulated venues that operate outside state gaming rules and were not built to run partner-payout programs. iGaming keeps compounding where it is legal, with New Jersey online casino now larger than its land-based floors. A channel growing toward nine-figure annualized volumes has so far offered US affiliates limited ways to monetize the sports traffic moving into it.