Michigan Is the New Undisputed King of iGaming Revenue, at Least for Now

The third in the trifecta of iGaming reports every month comes from the upper Midwest and provides slightly different insight from the other six operating iGaming states, tightly clustered together on the Eastern seaboard. Due to population Pennsylvania, with it’s population of slightly more than 13 million, and New Jersey with its nearly 10 million residents get the lion’s share of interest, but Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, and West Virginia all have legal iGaming up and running, and while it’s legal in Maine, court cases have pushed off actual casino openings indefinitely.

This leaves Michigan, with just over ten million people, which reports its revenue numbers slightly behind the others as a sometimes also ran, with analysts having already dissected, crunched, and opined on numbers for a week or more before we hear what they have been up to. But that will certainly not be the case for March 2026. While it’s true that New Jersey and Pennsylvania both report total and iGaming revenue numbers that were near past records, Michigan blew its old iGaming revenue records out of the water last month.

A Record-Shattering March 2026

In fact, for the first time, Michigan's online casinos, minus online sports betting, eclipsed both New Jersey and PA by a wide margin in March, with Gross Revenues of $321 million, eclipsing the previous record set just three months back in December 2025. That number was up nearly 19% just from the previous month, and more than 23% Year over Year. (YOY)

Much of that heavy lifting was done by the number one operator in Michigan. FanDuel was up nearly $18 million over the previous March to $85 million, while its main competitor, BetMGM, only managed to grow its market by 3% to $71 million. DraftKings, which is not used to running third in most states and is a perennial number two on the East Coast, actually lost ground YOY to $40 million, down 3%.

But it was the hard-working middle-of-the-pack operators who made up most of the rest of the difference. Hard Rock Bet, which didn’t even launch in the State until December of last year, pulled in $21 million, and Bet Rivers grew its business 46% to $25 million.

New Jersey, by comparison, posted $272 million in iGaming revenue, or roughly $29.50 per capita, while Pennsylvania only posted $254 million in or slightly less than $20 per resident, which more clearly shows just how much of a frontrunner Michigan has become. 

The Retail Struggle: Brick-and-Mortar Feels the Pinch

In comparison, though it’s three retail casinos, all in the Detroit market, were off 4.5% from March last year, despite posting the best numbers they had had since May 2025, with $111 million in revenue, which like New Jersey and Pennsylvania before, it show the struggles of retail casinos in the face of a rapidly growing online juggernaut.

With nearly two dozen land-based tribal casinos that don’t report monthly revenue in any meaningful granular way, it can be a little difficult to get a read across the whole state, but it's likely that retail casinos in what are sometimes remote locations are also struggling. 

It remains to be seen if these numbers were a simple one-off, as weather and higher gas prices drove players to prefer gambling on their phone to a drive to a retail location somewhere, or if we are actually witnessing a Michigan flip where the Wolverine state is the new undisputed champion of iGaming revenue in the US.