Illinois Video Gambling Data: Terminals, Locations, Revenue and Taxes, 2012–2026
Illinois operates what the Illinois Gaming Board calls the largest distributed video gaming network of its kind in the world: nearly 50,000 slot-style machines in bars, restaurants, gas stations, truck stops and fraternal halls. This page turns the Illinois Gaming Board's monthly public reports into one reference: how much is played, how much is lost, where the machines are, and what the money means. It is maintained by Chris Beerman, LCSW, CADC, a gambling addiction therapist in Chicago.
- Compiled by
- Chris Beerman, MSW, LCSW, CADC
- Primary source
- Illinois Gaming Board monthly reports
- Current through
- July 2026
- Last reviewed
- September 12, 2026
- Update schedule
- Quarterly
NTI = net terminal income: the amount played minus the amount paid back to players — in other words, what players lost. Fiscal years run July–June. Counts are as of the month named; dollar figures are period totals.
How video gambling in Illinois has grown
Video gaming terminals went live in the fall of 2012. In the first full year, 2013, players lost $301M on 13,374 machines. In 2025 they lost $3.19B on 49,450 machines — more than ten times as much, on nearly four times the terminals. Losses per machine have risen too: from about $22,000 per terminal in 2013 to about $64,000 in 2025.
Growth in the number of terminals has slowed — the state added 744 terminals in 2025 against 3,182 in 2022 — but the money has not: net terminal income grew 6.0% in 2025 and is running 8.0% ahead through July 2026. Most of the recent growth is more play per machine, not more machines.
Where the money goes
Illinois taxes net terminal income at 35% (the rate has stepped up from the original 30%: to 33% in July 2019, 34% in July 2020 and 35% in July 2024 — each step is visible in the monthly data as a change in the tax-to-income ratio). Host municipalities and counties receive 5 percentage points of that; the state keeps the rest. What remains after tax is split between the terminal operator and the establishment. In calendar 2025 the tax came to $1.12B: $955M to the state and $160M to local governments.
For a municipality, the local share works out to 5% of what its residents and visitors lose. Springfield's $2.8M in 2025 came from $55.9M in losses inside the city.
All legal gambling in Illinois: what players lose, per adult
Video gaming terminals are the largest of Illinois's four legal gambling products, but not the only one. Putting the four together — using the state's own fiscal-year figures — gives a number nobody else publishes: in FY2025 (July 2024 – June 2025) Illinois players lost $7.58 billion to legal gambling — the equivalent of about $751 for every adult resident. A year earlier it was $7.09 billion, or about $702 per adult resident. This is a population-normalized measure of the size of the market, not an estimate of what the average resident personally lost: some of the money is lost by visitors, most adults gamble little or not at all, and Illinoisans also lose money in neighboring states that does not appear here.
"Losses" here means the same thing for each product: what players wagered minus what was paid back — net terminal income for video gaming, adjusted gross receipts for casinos and sportsbooks, and sales minus prizes for the lottery. Video gaming's share was 41% in FY2025. Not included: daily fantasy sports, prediction markets, out-of-state and tribal casinos, and illegal or offshore betting — so the true figure is higher. Sports betting has its own page: Illinois Sports Betting Data — monthly handle, revenue, hold, bets placed, operators and taxes, 2020–2026.
What Illinois spends on gambling treatment
Against $7.58 billion in losses, the state appropriated $10 million for the treatment and prevention of compulsive gambling in FY2025 and $15 million in FY2026 — and according to reporting by Capitol News Illinois and the Illinois Answers Project, only about $1.5 million was actually spent on treatment and prevention in 2025. Drawn to scale, the comparison looks like this:
Put another way: for every $1,000 Illinois players lost in FY2025, the state set aside about $1.32 for treatment and prevention and, on the reported figures, spent about $0.20. The FY2026 appropriation works out to roughly $1.49 per adult per year, against the $751 per adult lost.
Clinical context. These are appropriations and reported spending, not a measure of unmet need — Illinois has no published series on how many people sought or received gambling treatment. What the ratio does show is that the state's response is funded at a different order of magnitude from the activity it is responding to. In July 2026 Illinois codified gambling disorder as an addiction under the Substance Use Disorder Act (SB 2749), which, as Capitol News Illinois reported, allows the state to fund treatment for gambling disorder on its own — previously state-funded inpatient care was available only to gamblers who also had a substance use disorder; the law attached no new funding.
Where the machines are
Video gaming is a local-option law: municipalities and counties choose whether to allow it. The result is a map with holes in it. Chicago prohibited terminals until 2026 (see below), while many of the suburbs ringing the city — Cicero, Berwyn, Oak Lawn, Niles, Elmwood Park, Melrose Park, Alsip, Tinley Park — are among the state's busiest markets. Cook County alone has more than 9,000 terminals despite Chicago's absence, according to the state's Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability.
Ranking by total losses favors big cities. Ranking by losses per machine shows where terminals are worked hardest — and the list is almost entirely Chicago's inner-ring and southwest suburbs, at roughly 1.6 to 1.8 times the statewide average.
Losses per resident adult, and household income
Dividing each municipality's net terminal income by its adult population gives the most direct local figure available: what is lost per resident adult per year. Statewide, video gaming losses in 2025 came to about $315 per adult. In the busiest towns it is several times that.
Read this carefully. Losses in a town are not all lost by its residents. Crestwood, Effingham, Loves Park and Mount Vernon sit on highways or serve wider regions, so their per-adult figures reflect visitors as much as locals. The figure is best read as the intensity of gambling in a place, not the burden on its residents.
Income. The obvious question is whether the machines are worked hardest in lower-income towns. Across these 34 municipalities the answer is: not clearly. The 20 with median household income below the Illinois median ($83,390) averaged $836 lost per adult; the 14 above it averaged $611. The overall correlation between income and losses per adult is weak (r = -0.16), and the gap between the two groups is driven by a handful of small regional-draw towns. Decatur ($51,592 median income, $895 per adult) and Kankakee ($47,514, $888) fit the expected pattern; New Lenox ($140,865, $891) and Mokena ($123,889, $908) do not. This is a sample of high-volume towns, not the whole state; a full analysis would need every municipality and its adult population, and is on the list for a future update.
| Municipality | Loss per adult | Median household income | NTI 2025 | Adults |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crestwood | $1,609 | $75,752 | $14.1M | 8,771 |
| Effingham | $1,525 | $72,377 | $14.9M | 9,764 |
| Mount Vernon | $1,507 | $55,357 | $16.6M | 10,981 |
| Loves Park | $1,485 | $61,868 | $28.0M | 18,875 |
| Alsip | $1,197 | $66,585 | $16.8M | 14,066 |
| Ottawa | $1,027 | $71,413 | $14.3M | 13,957 |
| Melrose Park | $954 | $66,189 | $17.7M | 18,526 |
| Elmwood Park | $909 | $91,955 | $17.2M | 18,869 |
| Mokena | $908 | $123,889 | $14.1M | 15,540 |
| Decatur | $895 | $51,592 | $48.0M | 53,628 |
| New Lenox | $891 | $140,865 | $18.0M | 20,225 |
| Kankakee | $888 | $47,514 | $15.6M | 17,527 |
| Villa Park | $841 | $95,015 | $14.3M | 17,007 |
| Niles | $780 | $75,274 | $19.6M | 25,085 |
| McHenry | $753 | $86,315 | $17.6M | 23,432 |
| South Elgin | $752 | $127,203 | $14.9M | 19,806 |
| Quincy | $746 | $56,480 | $22.8M | 30,551 |
| Springfield | $625 | $66,064 | $55.9M | 89,487 |
| Tinley Park | $607 | $105,189 | $26.6M | 43,836 |
| Oak Lawn | $599 | $83,911 | $25.9M | 43,297 |
| Pekin | $588 | $60,790 | $14.8M | 25,209 |
| Cicero | $569 | $70,842 | $34.6M | 60,739 |
| Addison | $546 | $90,431 | $15.7M | 28,785 |
| Carol Stream | $464 | $102,309 | $14.5M | 31,216 |
| Berwyn | $453 | $78,408 | $19.3M | 42,681 |
| Waukegan | $431 | $71,919 | $29.3M | 67,890 |
| Romeoville | $430 | $106,325 | $13.9M | 32,199 |
| Bloomington | $429 | $77,384 | $26.2M | 61,073 |
| Hoffman Estates | $403 | $106,806 | $15.6M | 38,652 |
| Rockford | $378 | $54,752 | $42.3M | 111,717 |
| Champaign | $334 | $56,118 | $25.6M | 76,695 |
| Joliet | $333 | $92,201 | $38.3M | 115,094 |
| Peoria | $295 | $59,410 | $24.7M | 83,856 |
| Aurora | $117 | $93,633 | $15.9M | 135,766 |
Oakbrook Terrace is omitted (population under 5,000, no QuickFacts data). Chicago, for reference: about 2.2 million adults and, through July 2026, no video gaming terminals.
Top 25 municipalities, calendar 2025
| # | Municipality | Locations | Terminals | NTI 2025 | Municipal share | vs 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Springfield | 153 | 851 | $55.9M | $2.80M | +7.3% |
| 2 | Decatur | 88 | 512 | $48.0M | $2.40M | +1.8% |
| 3 | Rockford | 97 | 530 | $42.3M | $2.12M | +2.4% |
| 4 | Joliet | 101 | 563 | $38.3M | $1.92M | +6.1% |
| 5 | Cicero | 79 | 445 | $34.6M | $1.73M | -5.4% |
| 6 | Cook County (unincorporated) | 53 | 301 | $29.4M | $1.47M | +10.5% |
| 7 | Waukegan | 63 | 358 | $29.3M | $1.46M | -0.6% |
| 8 | Loves Park | 85 | 489 | $28.0M | $1.40M | -0.5% |
| 9 | Tinley Park | 46 | 266 | $26.6M | $1.33M | +17.2% |
| 10 | Bloomington | 68 | 315 | $26.2M | $1.31M | +3.2% |
| 11 | Oak Lawn | 53 | 302 | $25.9M | $1.30M | +8.8% |
| 12 | Champaign | 57 | 306 | $25.6M | $1.28M | +5.9% |
| 13 | Peoria | 73 | 379 | $24.7M | $1.24M | +3.6% |
| 14 | Lake County (unincorporated) | 73 | 416 | $24.1M | $1.21M | +5.3% |
| 15 | Quincy | 99 | 415 | $22.8M | $1.14M | -1.0% |
| 16 | Sangamon County (unincorporated) | 50 | 292 | $20.8M | $1.04M | +0.3% |
| 17 | Niles | 30 | 171 | $19.6M | $0.98M | +1.2% |
| 18 | Berwyn | 74 | 400 | $19.3M | $0.97M | +8.3% |
| 19 | New Lenox | 37 | 217 | $18.0M | $0.90M | +13.9% |
| 20 | Melrose Park | 42 | 236 | $17.7M | $0.88M | +6.3% |
| 21 | McHenry | 47 | 258 | $17.6M | $0.88M | +15.2% |
| 22 | Elmwood Park | 30 | 171 | $17.2M | $0.86M | +6.1% |
| 23 | Alsip | 32 | 186 | $16.8M | $0.84M | +5.8% |
| 24 | Mount Vernon | 41 | 246 | $16.6M | $0.83M | -0.7% |
| 25 | DuPage County (unincorporated) | 30 | 173 | $16.4M | $0.82M | +24.5% |
Locations and terminals are counts reporting during 2025. The full top 40 with amount played and tax is in the downloadable data below.
Chicago video gambling tracker
Status as of July 2026 data: no City of Chicago establishment appears in the Illinois Gaming Board's video gaming revenue reports. The only "Chicago" entries in the state's municipality file are Chicago Heights, Chicago Ridge, North Chicago, South Chicago Heights and West Chicago — separate municipalities.
Chicago's prohibition on video gaming terminals ended with the city's 2026 budget, which added a city licensing requirement (Municipal Code chapter 4-155) on top of the state license. The Illinois Gaming Board approved its first Chicago establishment licenses at its June 2026 meeting, and by August the number of state-approved Chicago locations was in the dozens, with hundreds of applications pending — but as of mid-August the city had not yet issued its own licenses, so no terminal had gone live. This section will record the first month Chicago appears in IGB revenue data, and then track the city's terminal count and net terminal income monthly alongside the suburbs above.
- December 2025 — City Council's 2026 budget lifts the ban; Chapter 4-155 requires a city location license and terminal license in addition to state licensing.
- June 2026 — Illinois Gaming Board approves the first Chicago video gaming establishment licenses.
- August 2026 — State-approved Chicago locations reach the dozens; city licenses not yet issued; no Chicago revenue reported.
- Next update — first month with Chicago terminals reporting, if any.
If you play the machines at a bar near you and want to stop, the practical guide is here: How to stop playing the slot machines in Illinois bars.
Self-exclusion and video gaming terminals
The Illinois Gaming Board's Self-Exclusion Program covers the state's casinos and licensed sports wagering. It does not cover video gaming terminals — the roughly 50,000 machines in this dataset. Someone who has banned themselves from every casino and sportsbook in Illinois can still walk into a bar and play. In September 2026 the Board adopted a resolution stating that it is IGB policy to bring video gaming into the program, through ID-card readers on redemption terminals and ticket-in/ticket-out payment; technical standards and rulemaking come first, and no date has been set. The Illinois Lottery runs a separate program with different terms.
What each program covers, how to enroll, and what to do about the gap in the meantime: How to self-exclude from gambling in Illinois. Regulatory status last verified September 12, 2026.
Self-exclusion enrollments against losses
The closest thing Illinois publishes to a count of people acting on a gambling problem is enrollment in the Gaming Board's Self-Exclusion Program. In 2025, 595 people enrolled — the most in any year on record — bringing the total since the program began in 2002 to 16,115. Set against FY2025 losses, that is one new enrollment for roughly every $13 million lost — and 595 people in a year, against the roughly 383,000 Illinois adults the 2022 state needs assessment estimated to have a gambling problem, is a small number even before the caveats below.
Two things keep this from being a clean measure of help-seeking. The program covers casinos and sports wagering only — not the video gaming terminals that account for 41% of losses — so someone whose problem is the machines at a bar has nothing to enroll in. And enrollment is not the same as stopping: people on the list who returned to Illinois casinos forfeited about $248,000 in winnings in 2025 alone (cumulative $3,282,363 since 2002), money the Board directs to Department of Human Services programs.
Other help-seeking figures the state releases are scattered rather than serial: IDHS reports that treatment providers conducted more than 64,000 gambling screenings and assessments in state fiscal year 2025, and that Illinois ranks fourth nationally in calls, texts and chats to 1-800-GAMBLER. Illinois does not publish annual helpline volume as a series; if it does, that series belongs on this page next to the losses above.
Illinois video gaming timeline
- July 2009 — Video Gaming Act signed (Public Act 96-0034), legalizing up to five terminals in licensed liquor establishments, truck stops, and veterans' and fraternal organizations, with a 30% tax on net terminal income (25% state, 5% local). Municipalities may opt out.
- September–October 2012 — Terminals go live after three years of litigation and rulemaking. The IGB's first monthly report, September 2012, shows 61 terminals at 13 locations.
- 2013–2019 — Rapid expansion: from 13,374 terminals at the end of 2013 to 33,294 at the end of 2019.
- June 2019 — Gaming expansion law (Public Act 101-0031) raises the terminal limit per location from five to six, the maximum wager from $2 to $4 and the maximum payout from $500 to $1,199, and steps the tax to 33% (July 2019) and 34% (July 2020).
- March–June 2020, November 2020–January 2021 — Two statewide COVID-19 suspensions. Losses fell to $1.13B in 2020 and rebounded to $2.47B in 2021.
- July 2024 — Tax on net terminal income rises to 35%.
- FY2025 — Net terminal income passes $3 billion ($3.086B).
- December 2025 — Chicago lifts its ban on video gaming terminals.
- July 2026 — Illinois codifies gambling disorder as an addiction under the Substance Use Disorder Act (SB 2749), opening state-funded standalone inpatient gambling treatment.
- September 2026 — IGB adopts a resolution to extend self-exclusion to video gaming terminals (no effective date) and proposes shorter self-exclusion terms and remote enrollment.
What the numbers mean — and what they don't
Clinical context. Revenue measures gambling activity, not gambling disorder. Net terminal income is the sum of what everyone lost; it says nothing about how that loss is distributed across people. A rise in losses can reflect more players, more machines, more play per player, or more money from the same small group of people in trouble — the data cannot tell these apart. Treat these figures as a measure of availability and participation, and read them alongside prevalence, helpline and treatment data before drawing conclusions about addiction.
Three things the data does support:
Availability is high and local. Nearly 8,900 licensed locations means a terminal is within a short walk of most Illinois residents outside Chicago, in venues people visit for other reasons — a drink, gas, a fish fry. For someone trying to stop, that is different from a casino an hour away: the cue is on the route home. It is also why the self-exclusion gap matters clinically.
The money is concentrated. In 2025, 10 municipalities out of nearly a thousand with terminals accounted for 11% of losses, and the per-terminal ranking shows a cluster of suburbs around Chicago where each machine takes in roughly $100,000 a year. Communities where the machines are worked hardest may warrant closer monitoring and prevention effort, although revenue alone cannot establish the local prevalence of gambling-related harm.
Prevalence is the missing denominator. The most recent statewide estimate, a 2022 needs assessment commissioned by the Illinois Department of Human Services and conducted by Health Resources in Action, found 3.8% of Illinois adults (about 383,000 people) with a gambling problem and a further 7.7% (about 761,000) at risk. Illinois has not published a newer statewide prevalence study, so it is unclear how current prevalence compares with the 2022 estimate. Illinois has no published annual series linking video gaming to treatment admissions or helpline calls; when one exists it belongs here.
The practice pages behind this data:
- How to stop playing video gaming terminalsA therapist's guide to the machines in Illinois bars and gas stations
- Gambling addiction test (PGSI)The nine-question screen used in the Illinois prevalence study — free, private, scored on your device
- Illinois self-exclusion guideWhich programs cover what, how to enroll, and how to close the VGT gap yourself
- Gambling addiction therapy in ChicagoIn person in Logan Square; online across Illinois and Minnesota
- How to stop sports bettingFor the other side of Illinois gambling — the sportsbook in your pocket
- For partners and familiesWhat you can and can't do when someone else's gambling is the problem
Data tables
Statewide by calendar year
| Year | Locations (Dec) | Terminals (Dec) | Amount played | NTI | NTI tax | State | Local |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 (Sep–Dec) | 549 | 2,290 | $0.16B | $0.012B | $4M | $3M | $1M |
| 2013 | 3,253 | 13,374 | $3.85B | $0.301B | $90M | $75M | $15M |
| 2014 | 4,675 | 19,182 | $8.24B | $0.660B | $198M | $165M | $33M |
| 2015 | 5,222 | 22,135 | $11.39B | $0.914B | $274M | $228M | $46M |
| 2016 | 5,726 | 24,840 | $14.00B | $1.108B | $332M | $277M | $55M |
| 2017 | 6,359 | 28,271 | $16.45B | $1.303B | $391M | $326M | $65M |
| 2018 | 6,773 | 30,694 | $18.54B | $1.500B | $450M | $375M | $75M |
| 2019 | 7,180 | 33,294 | $20.36B | $1.677B | $528M | $444M | $84M |
| 2020 | 7,233 (Nov) | 37,159 (Nov) | $13.75B | $1.134B | $382M | $325M | $57M |
| 2021 | 7,841 | 41,826 | $29.76B | $2.475B | $841M | $718M | $124M |
| 2022 | 8,226 | 45,008 | $31.83B | $2.710B | $921M | $786M | $136M |
| 2023 | 8,464 | 47,047 | $32.64B | $2.884B | $981M | $836M | $144M |
| 2024 | 8,662 | 48,706 | $33.62B | $3.004B | $1,037M | $884M | $152M |
| 2025 | 8,861 | 49,450 | $34.98B | $3.186B | $1,115M | $955M | $160M |
| 2026 (Jan–Jul) | 8,726 | 49,693 | $21.50B | $1.990B | $697M | $600M | $97M |
Statewide by fiscal year (July–June)
| Fiscal year (Jul–Jun) | Amount played | Net terminal income | Change | NTI tax |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2014 | $6.14B | $0.485B | — | $146M |
| FY2015 | $10.00B | $0.805B | +65.8% | $241M |
| FY2016 | $12.81B | $1.021B | +26.8% | $306M |
| FY2017 | $15.23B | $1.202B | +17.8% | $361M |
| FY2018 | $17.56B | $1.406B | +17.0% | $422M |
| FY2019 | $19.51B | $1.593B | +13.2% | $478M |
| FY2020 | $14.77B | $1.223B | -23.2% | $403M |
| FY2021 | $23.36B | $1.934B | +58.2% | $658M |
| FY2022 | $31.43B | $2.632B | +36.1% | $895M |
| FY2023 | $32.45B | $2.821B | +7.2% | $959M |
| FY2024 | $32.97B | $2.932B | +3.9% | $997M |
| FY2025 | $34.24B | $3.086B | +5.2% | $1,080M |
| FY2026 | $35.95B | $3.310B | +7.2% | $1,158M |
Fiscal-year figures reconcile to the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability's published totals (for example FY2025 net terminal income of $3.086 billion).
Methodology, sources and downloads
Source. All figures are computed from the Illinois Gaming Board's monthly video gaming revenue reports (statewide summary and all-municipalities reports, CSV export), retrieved September 12, 2026. The IGB publishes each month's figures at the end of the following month; the latest month here is July 2026. Column definitions are the IGB's: amount played is total wagers including re-bet winnings; net terminal income is amount played minus amount won; NTI tax is the statutory tax on net terminal income, divided into state and municipal shares.
Aggregation. Calendar-year and fiscal-year totals are sums of the monthly rows. Terminal and location counts are point-in-time figures for the month named (December for year-end; November 2020 because December 2020 was suspended). Municipality figures are the IGB's own annual aggregates; county rows are unincorporated areas only. Per-terminal figures divide annual NTI by the terminal count in the IGB's annual municipality report and are restricted to municipalities with 100 or more terminals. Dollar figures in the downloads are rounded to the nearest dollar.
All-products figures. Casino adjusted gross receipts, sports wagering adjusted gross receipts, video gaming net terminal income and lottery sales and prizes are the fiscal-year figures in the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability's Wagering in Illinois: 2025 Update. Per-adult figures divide by the U.S. Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 Illinois population estimate (12,719,141) less the 20.6% under 18, about 10.1 million adults, for both fiscal years. Treatment appropriations ($10 million FY2025, $15 million FY2026) and the reported 2025 spending of about $1.5 million are from Capitol News Illinois (July 27, 2026), drawing on an Illinois Answers Project investigation; the spending figure is journalism, not a state-published series, and is labelled as reported.
Self-exclusion and help-seeking figures. Annual enrollments and cumulative totals are quoted from the Illinois Gaming Board's annual reports for 2018–2025 (the 2021 figure is the difference between the 2020 and 2022 cumulative totals; the 2021 report does not state it). Forfeitures are the change in the cumulative amount reported. Screenings and the helpline ranking are from the IDHS Problem Gambling Awareness Month release of March 2, 2026. Per-adult municipal figures divide calendar-2025 NTI by each municipality's July 1, 2025 Census population estimate (Vintage 2025) times one minus its share under 18, and use median household income for 2020–2024 in 2024 dollars — all from Census QuickFacts, which covers places of 5,000 or more. Correlation is Pearson's r across the 34 municipalities shown.
Known limitations. Location counts fluctuate month to month with licensing cycles (for example a drop of about 240 between May and June 2026 while the terminal count rose); year-end counts are more reliable than any single month. Nothing here measures the number of people gambling or the number harmed.
Other Illinois gambling data. Sports wagering handle, revenue, bets and taxes are compiled on Illinois Sports Betting Data. Not yet compiled here: casino adjusted gross receipts and admissions (published monthly by the IGB in the same format); Illinois Lottery sales; the IDHS/HRIA 2022 statewide gambling needs assessment.
Download the data
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 and analysis. Suggested form: "Illinois Gaming Board data compiled by Chicago Addiction Therapy, September 2026." 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. National: 1-800-MY-RESET. Crisis: call or text 988.