Illinois Casino Data: Revenue, Admissions and Taxes by Casino, 2020–2026
Illinois has 17 licensed casinos and racinos, up from 10 in 2020, and the 2019 gaming expansion has not finished rolling out. This page turns the Illinois Gaming Board's monthly casino reports into one reference: how much players lose at Illinois casinos, how many visits they make, which casinos take the most, and what the state collects. It is maintained by Chris Beerman, LCSW, CADC, a gambling addiction therapist in Chicago, as part of the Illinois gambling statistics collection.
- Compiled by
- Chris Beerman, MSW, LCSW, CADC
- Primary source
- Illinois Gaming Board monthly casino reports
- Current through
- August 2026
- Last reviewed
- October 3, 2026
- Update schedule
- Quarterly
- Standards
- editorial standards · corrections
AGR = adjusted gross receipts: what players wagered minus what was paid back to them, in other words what players lost. Fiscal years run July–June.
How Illinois casino revenue has changed
For most of the last decade Illinois casinos shrank. Adjusted gross receipts fell every fiscal year from $1.60 billion in FY2013, the first full year video gaming terminals were in bars, to $1.35 billion in FY2019. The state's forecasting commission attributes much of that decline to video gaming and out-of-state competition. COVID-19 closures cut FY2020 and FY2021 further. Since then casino losses have grown every year, reaching $2.05 billion in FY2026, the highest of the fourteen fiscal years charted here.
The growth is new casinos, not busier old ones. The ten casinos operating before the 2019 expansion law took in $1.32 billion in FY2026, about what they took in FY2022, and the one big gainer among them, Hollywood Casino Joliet, grew after it moved off its riverboat into a new land-based building in August 2025. Six casinos licensed under the 2019 law, plus the Fairmount Park racino, added $732 million.
Casino by casino
Rivers Casino in Des Plaines is in a different class from every other Illinois casino: $520.9 million in FY2026, a quarter of the statewide total and more than twice the next casino. Wind Creek Chicago Southland in East Hazel Crest, open since November 2024, is already second. The two Chicago-area casinos still in temporary buildings, Bally's Chicago in the Medinah Temple and American Place in Waukegan, are both in the top seven.
| Casino | AGR FY2026 | vs FY2025 | Admissions | Per visit | Table games | Taxes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rivers Casino Des Plaines | $520.9M | +3.2% | 2,988k | $174 | 37% | $176.0M |
| Wind Creek Chicago Southland East Hazel Crest; opened Nov 2024 | $223.2M | n/a | 1,977k | $113 | 25% | $64.3M |
| Hard Rock Casino Rockford Rockford | $152.0M | +14.1% | 1,406k | $108 | 15% | $42.7M |
| Grand Victoria Casino Elgin | $147.6M | +7.9% | 955k | $155 | 19% | $38.4M |
| Hollywood Casino Joliet Joliet; new land-based casino Aug 2025 | $132.4M | +50.2% | 1,081k | $122 | 16% | $32.6M |
| Bally's Chicago Chicago; temporary site | $129.3M | +3.3% | 1,370k | $94 | 38% | $36.8M |
| American Place Waukegan; temporary site | $127.4M | +11.5% | 879k | $145 | 20% | $31.2M |
| Harrah's Joliet Joliet | $112.2M | -6.1% | 654k | $172 | 13% | $27.9M |
| Hollywood Casino Aurora Aurora | $100.2M | -1.6% | 859k | $117 | 21% | $23.3M |
| DraftKings at Casino Queen East St. Louis | $84.4M | -1.7% | 791k | $107 | 22% | $18.9M |
| Bally's Quad Cities Rock Island | $68.3M | +8.5% | 729k | $94 | 6% | $15.3M |
| Par-A-Dice East Peoria | $63.1M | +4.5% | 426k | $148 | 16% | $12.9M |
| Harrah's Metropolis Metropolis | $56.4M | +1.1% | 384k | $147 | 18% | $11.2M |
| Golden Nugget Danville Danville | $41.5M | +9.2% | 338k | $123 | 14% | $7.9M |
| Walker's Bluff Carterville | $36.6M | +8.1% | 272k | $135 | 11% | $6.8M |
| Argosy Casino Alton Alton | $35.0M | +0.7% | 372k | $94 | 7% | $7.0M |
| Fairmount Park (racino) Collinsville; opened Apr 2025 | $21.7M | n/a | 286k | $76 | 2% | $4.1M |
"vs FY2025" is not shown for casinos open only part of FY2025. Per visit = AGR per admission. Table games = share of AGR from table games; the rest is slot machines. Taxes = state and local wagering and admission taxes.
Visits and money per visit
Illinois casinos recorded 15.6 million admissions in calendar 2025, double the 7.7 million of 2021. An admission is one entry through the door: a person who visits weekly counts 52 times, so this is a count of visits, not people, and no Illinois source publishes how many different people visit a casino. Revenue per admission drifted down as new casinos drew more casual visitors, from $155 in 2021 to $125 in 2025, and has turned up in 2026. It varies widely by casino: about $170 per visit at Rivers and Harrah's Joliet, under $100 at Bally's Chicago and Argosy Alton.
Taxes
Casinos pay a graduated wagering tax on adjusted gross receipts plus an admission tax per entry; part of each goes to the host city and county. The 2019 expansion law split table games from slot machines and capped the table-game rate at 20%, so the state's effective rate fell: the forecasting commission puts the average effective wagering tax rate at 27.3% in FY2020 and 20.0% in FY2025. Even so, total casino taxes have grown with revenue, to $557 million in FY2026 ($430 million state, $127 million local). Of the state's share, $186 million reached the Education Assistance Fund in FY2025; the rest goes to statutory distributions first.
What these numbers leave out
Many Illinoisans gamble at casinos just across the state line. The four Indiana casinos in the Chicago area took in $929 million in FY2025, 41.5% of the Chicago-region casino market by the forecasting commission's count, and Missouri casinos take most of the St. Louis market. None of that appears here. Neither do online casino games, which are illegal in Illinois but widely available from offshore sites, or sweepstakes casinos.
Still to come: Bally's permanent Chicago casino in River West, authorized for up to 4,000 gaming positions. In January 2026 Bally's sought legislation extending its temporary Medinah Temple license to September 2027 while saying it aimed to finish the permanent building by the end of 2026. American Place's permanent Waukegan casino and a racino at Hawthorne in Cicero are also pending. When the permanent Chicago casino opens it will be the largest change to this dataset since 2019.
Illinois casino timeline
- February 1990 — Riverboat Gambling Act (Public Act 86-1029) makes Illinois the second state to legalize riverboat casinos; ten licenses.
- September 1991 — The first riverboat, the Alton Belle, opens.
- January 2008 — The Smoke-free Illinois Act bans smoking on casino floors; revenue falls sharply in 2008, and a St. Louis Fed study attributes a substantial share of the drop to the ban.
- July 2011 — Rivers Casino opens in Des Plaines, the tenth license.
- September 2012 — Video gaming terminals go live in bars and gas stations; casino revenue falls in each of the next nine fiscal years, through the COVID-19 closures.
- June 2019 — Gaming expansion law (Public Act 101-0031) authorizes six new casinos including Chicago, racinos at tracks, 2,000 positions per casino and sports wagering.
- March 2020 – January 2021 — Two COVID-19 closures.
- November 2021 — Hard Rock opens a temporary casino in Rockford (permanent building August 2024).
- 2023 — American Place opens in a temporary Waukegan facility (February), Golden Nugget in Danville (May), Walker's Bluff in Carterville (August), and Bally's in a temporary Chicago casino at the Medinah Temple (September).
- November 2024 — Wind Creek Chicago Southland opens in East Hazel Crest.
- April 2025 — Fairmount Park racino opens in Collinsville.
- August 2025 — Hollywood Casino Joliet moves from its riverboat to a land-based casino.
- FY2026 — Casino adjusted gross receipts pass $2 billion.
What the numbers mean, and what they don't
Clinical context. Casino revenue measures gambling activity, not gambling disorder. Adjusted gross receipts are the sum of what everyone lost; admissions count visits. Neither says how many people gamble, how often, or how many are in trouble. Read these figures alongside prevalence, help-seeking and treatment data before drawing conclusions about addiction.
Three things the data does support. First, casino access around Chicago has expanded faster than the totals suggest: three of the seven new casinos (Chicago, Waukegan and East Hazel Crest) are inside the metro area, and the permanent Chicago casino, at up to 4,000 positions, will be twice the size any Illinois casino is allowed today. Population studies have linked living within about ten miles of a casino with higher rates of problem gambling (Welte and colleagues, 2004). Second, casinos are where Illinois self-exclusion actually works: the Gaming Board's program covers every casino and sportsbook, while the video gaming terminals in bars are not covered yet. Someone whose problem is casinos has a real tool. Third, most Illinois gambling losses are not at casinos: video gaming terminals took $3.31 billion in FY2026 against casinos' $2.05 billion. The Illinois gambling statistics page puts all four products side by side.
- Illinois self-exclusion guideHow to ban yourself from every Illinois casino and sportsbook, and what it does not cover
- Gambling addiction test (PGSI)The nine-question screen used in the Illinois prevalence study, free and private
- Gambling addiction therapy in ChicagoIn person in Logan Square; online across Illinois and Minnesota
- Gambling debt and financial recoveryWhat to do about the money after casino losses
- Illinois video gambling dataTerminals, locations and losses by town, 2012–2026
- Illinois sports betting dataHandle, revenue, hold, operators and taxes, 2020–2026
Data tables
Statewide by fiscal year (July–June)
| Fiscal year | Casinos (June) | AGR | Change | Table games | Admissions | AGR per admission | State tax | Local tax |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2021 | 10 | $897.3M | -4.8% | 24.7% | 5.70M | $158 | $151.9M | $50.5M |
| FY2022 | 11 | $1,307.5M | +45.7% | 25.2% | 8.72M | $150 | $272.1M | $74.1M |
| FY2023 | 13 | $1,429.5M | +9.3% | 24.9% | 9.90M | $144 | $306.4M | $81.4M |
| FY2024 | 15 | $1,618.2M | +13.2% | 24.6% | 12.12M | $134 | $330.9M | $97.3M |
| FY2025 | 17 | $1,815.9M | +12.2% | 23.9% | 14.52M | $125 | $367.0M | $113.7M |
| FY2026 | 17 | $2,052.5M | +13.0% | 23.6% | 15.77M | $130 | $430.3M | $127.1M |
Statewide by calendar year
| Year | Months | AGR | Table games | Admissions | AGR per admission | State tax | Local tax |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 12 | $1,187.3M | 25.0% | 7.68M | $155 | $248.7M | $67.0M |
| 2022 | 12 | $1,348.7M | 25.1% | 9.10M | $148 | $290.0M | $76.5M |
| 2023 | 12 | $1,521.5M | 24.2% | 11.10M | $137 | $320.3M | $88.4M |
| 2024 | 12 | $1,689.2M | 24.4% | 13.02M | $130 | $345.2M | $106.0M |
| 2025 | 12 | $1,943.7M | 23.6% | 15.56M | $125 | $408.2M | $121.0M |
| 2026 (Jan–Aug) | 8 | $1,448.6M | 23.9% | 10.75M | $135 | $269.3M | $88.8M |
FY2021 to FY2025 totals computed from the monthly reports match the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability's published figures exactly, for the state and for each casino (for example FY2025 $1,815.9 million; Rivers $504.7 million).
Methodology and sources
Source. Monthly figures are the Illinois Gaming Board's Casino Summary reports (CSV export from the IGB revenue reports portal), July 2020 through August 2026, retrieved October 3, 2026. Columns used: admissions, operating days, table game AGR, electronic gaming device AGR, total AGR, state share and local share. The IGB portal begins in July 2020; FY2013 to FY2020 statewide totals are from the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability's Wagering in Illinois: 2025 Update (October 2025), which also supplies the effective tax rates, the Education Assistance Fund transfer and the Indiana comparison.
Definitions. Adjusted gross receipts are gross receipts less winnings paid to wagerers, as defined by the Illinois Gambling Act. "State share" and "local share" are the IGB's wagering-plus-admission tax allocations. Fiscal and calendar totals are sums of monthly rows; the casino count is the number of casinos reporting in June of each fiscal year. "Pre-2019 casinos" are Alton, Aurora, East Peoria, East St. Louis, Elgin, both Joliet casinos, Metropolis, Rock Island and Des Plaines. Per-adult figures divide by about 10.1 million adult residents (Census Vintage 2025 estimate less the share under 18), the same denominator used across these pages.
Known limitations. Admissions are entries, not people. Casino-level comparisons across years are affected by openings, temporary facilities and moves. Nothing here measures how many people gamble or how many are harmed. A downloadable CSV of the monthly series will be added with the next quarterly update.
Compiled by Chicago Addiction Therapy from Illinois Gaming Board public records. Free to reuse with attribution: please cite the Illinois Gaming Board as the source of the underlying data and link to this page for the compilation. Questions or corrections: chris@chicagoaddictiontherapy.com.
If gambling is a problem for you or someone you love: Illinois helpline 1-800-GAMBLER, or text GAMB to 833234. Crisis: call or text 988.