The warning signs for a dramatic rise in gambling addiction are showing no signs of abating this year, according to the most recent annual report from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, released today.
The number of people excluding themselves from gambling in Pennsylvania increased by 18% in the past fiscal year, continuing a dramatic rise that has not slowed since Pennsylvania’s first online casino was opened in 2019.
If the trend continues, by the end of this year more than 10,000 Pennsylvanians will add themselves to the list of people with gambling problems severe enough that they need to ban themselves. That’s up from fewer than 1,500 just six years ago. In all, more than 30,000 Pennsylvanians are voluntarily excluded from one or more forms of gambling.
The increase in problem gambling is happening as online gambling becomes increasingly popular. Revenue from online gambling increased 18% last year, according to the board’s report, even as revenue from in-person casinos fell by 0.5%.
The increase in gambling addiction is leading some families into major conflicts and financial ruin, PennLive reported in June, and sometimes even suicide, as the Post-Gazette reported In September.
Total gambling revenue in Pennsylvania exceeded $7 billion last year for the first time, with more than $3 billion in tax revenue generated – both record highs.
No new curbs, but skill games debated
A nonpartisan report in July said that new regulations were needed to begin to address the surge in problem gambling in the commonwealth. The report said Pennsylvania faces a choice between addressing the problem quickly in a way that could decrease gambling revenue overall, or allowing the problem to continue to grow while it considers taking more targeted actions that wouldn’t have as big of an impact on the state’s bottom line.
Earlier this year, the Gambling Control Board proposed a “comprehensive overhaul” of the commonwealth’s gambling regulations to take into account changes brought by online gambling. Those changes include new limits on how casinos are allowed to advertise. Pittsburgh is the No. 5 market for gambling advertising in the country and Philadelphia is No. 1, according to a report in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
A handful of Pennsylvania legislators have been calling for reforms, including Sen. Wayne Fontana, D-Brookline, who has called for banning the use of credit cards with online casinos. But so far the state legislature has yet to pass any major reforms to address gambling addiction.
The increasing tax revenue from online gambling comes at a time when Pennsylvania lawmakers are debating whether to tax skill games, the slot machine-like games found in local convenience stores.
The state Supreme Court ruled that the games are subject to the state’s gambling law, meaning they could be subject to seizure by law enforcement beginning Oct. 13. Legislators have been debating whether and how to allow, regulate and tax the games.
Allowing and taxing these skill games could bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in additional tax revenue and help out the small businesses that host them. But it could lead to more problem gambling and it’s opposed by Pennsylvania’s casinos, which are already seeing their business decline in the face of competition from online gambling.
A 2025 report by the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs found that people who gambled on multiple platforms were more likely to report a gambling addiction than people who gambled only in-person or only online. The report found that between 2.5% and 6.4% of Pennsylvanian adults could be classified as problem gamblers, suggesting somewhere between 200,000 and 700,000 Pennsylvanians currently have a gambling problem.
The vast majority of Pennsylvania’s online gambling revenue comes from slot machines. Sports betting continues to increase dramatically, but still generates less than a quarter of the revenue that online slot machines generated last year.
Oliver Morrison is the health and environment reporter at Pittsburgh’s Public Source and can be reached at oliver@publicsource.org.
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