Kambi report: tribal sportsbooks post record wagers as margins climb
More than 10 million bets moved through tribal sportsbook networks in 2025, and the money kept better than ever.
Sports betting inside tribal casinos is growing faster and holding more money than at any point since the practice went mainstream, according to Kambi's 2026 Tribal Sports Betting Report. The Stockholm-based supplier, whose network now spans more than 30 tribal properties across North America, said its tribal partners handled upward of 10 million individual wagers during 2025 and that betting margins reached their highest level on record. The findings land as tribal gaming as a whole posted a record year, with the National Indian Gaming Commission reporting $46.2 billion in gross gaming revenue for fiscal 2025, and they sharpen a long-running debate about where sports betting really fits inside a tribal business that remains firmly dominated by its slot floors.
The primary keyword running through the report is straightforward: tribal sports betting is maturing. Volume is up, product mix is shifting toward higher-margin bet types, and a small but growing set of operators is pairing retail sportsbooks with online platforms. Kambi counts leading tribal operators including Mohegan, Turning Stone Enterprises and Wind Creek Hospitality among its partners, and five of its tribal clients now run online as well as on-property books.
Margins moved in the house's favor
The headline number for operators is hold — the share of every dollar wagered that the sportsbook keeps after paying winners. Kambi reported that its tribal network's hold rose from 7.1% in 2023 to 7.7% in 2024 and 10.8% in 2025, a substantial jump in an industry where a single percentage point of margin can reshape a book's economics. Rising hold is not simply luck. It reflects a deliberate shift in what bettors are placing: more same-game parlays, which combine several correlated outcomes into one longer-odds ticket, and more in-play or live wagering, where prices move continuously through a game.
Live betting has been the standout. Kambi said on-property live bets rose 76% in 2023, jumped another 52% in 2024 and grew a further 15% in 2025. Parlays and live markets carry structurally higher margins than straight single-game bets, so as they take a bigger share of the handle, blended hold climbs with them. For tribal operators weighing whether a sportsbook earns its floor space, the margin trend is the most encouraging data point in years.
Retail still leads, but online is the wedge
Most tribal sports betting remains a retail activity — placed at a counter or, increasingly, at a self-service kiosk on the casino floor. That distinguishes the tribal segment from the commercial market, where mobile apps drive the overwhelming majority of handle. The distinction is not accidental. Many tribes operate under compacts and state frameworks that either confine wagering to tribal lands or route online bets through an on-reservation server under a hub-and-spoke arrangement, keeping the legal center of gravity on sovereign ground. Readers weighing how those legal structures shape the business can consult our Legal Guide.
Even so, the operators that have added digital channels are seeing the payoff. Mohegan, one of the tribal industry's most globally diversified operators, has repeatedly credited its record digital earnings to the combination of a recognizable brand and a betting product that travels beyond the casino walls. Kambi's report frames online not as a replacement for the retail book but as an extension of it — a way to keep bettors engaged between visits and to capture handle that would otherwise leak to commercial apps.
Context: a small slice of a very large pie
For all the growth, sports betting remains a modest contributor to tribal gaming's overall revenue. Industry data through the first half of 2026 put nationwide tribal sports betting at roughly $1.3 billion in monthly handle — a figure that, converted to revenue at even double-digit hold, is dwarfed by the slot and table income that anchors the $46 billion industry. NIGC officials have described 2025 as another strong year for tribal operators while cautioning that the broader sports-betting market softened slightly in the spring, in part because of competition from prediction-market platforms offering event contracts on sports outcomes.
The report's throughline is that tribal sportsbooks are getting better at converting handle into margin, even as sports betting stays a supporting act rather than the headliner.
That framing matters for how tribes invest. A sportsbook that holds nearly 11% and drives foot traffic, food-and-beverage spend and loyalty sign-ups can justify its footprint without ever becoming a primary profit center. Kambi's data suggests the tribal segment has moved past the experimental phase and into one focused on optimization — better pricing, richer live markets and selective online expansion. For operators deciding how aggressively to build, the 2026 report is a case for steady investment rather than a rush. Those comparing operator strategies across the market can browse our operator comparison to see how the leaders in retail and digital betting stack up.