NASDAQ Gambling Stocks: Guide to Publicly Traded Gambling Companies

NASDAQ is one of the two major United States stock exchanges and the leading global venue for technology, consumer, and entertainment-sector listings. Several of the largest publicly traded gambling companies have chosen NASDAQ as their listing home, which makes the exchange a central venue for understanding how the modern online casino and sports betting industry is financed, scrutinized, and disclosed to the public. For players, analysts, and informed industry observers, knowing which gambling companies trade on NASDAQ (and which trade elsewhere) is the starting point for any meaningful look at the financial side of the sector.

This article provides general information about NASDAQ-listed gambling companies and the US public markets for educational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice, investment recommendation, or solicitation to buy or sell any security.

How NASDAQ Differs From the NYSE

NASDAQ, short for the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, was founded in 1971 as the first fully electronic stock exchange. It operates without a physical trading floor, with all transactions processed through a distributed electronic network. The New York Stock Exchange is older, larger in total market capitalization, and historically associated with industrial firms, banks, and traditional consumer companies.

NASDAQ has earned a reputation as the preferred listing home for technology, digital media, gaming, and consumer internet businesses. That reputation includes most digital-first gambling operators. Both exchanges apply the same federal disclosure requirements set by the Securities and Exchange Commission, so a listing on either exchange provides investors with the same core regulatory protections. The real differences are in listing fees, tier structures, brand positioning, and sector concentration rather than in how closely listed companies are regulated.

Why Gambling Companies Prefer NASDAQ Listings

NASDAQ's technology-sector positioning aligns with how modern online gambling companies describe themselves. Operators like DraftKings pitch their business as digital entertainment and technology platforms rather than as traditional casino companies, and NASDAQ's brand reinforces that framing.

The wave of SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) activity that peaked in 2020 and 2021 was heavily concentrated on NASDAQ, and several gambling companies used SPAC mergers to reach public markets during that window. NASDAQ's tiered market structure, which includes the Nasdaq Global Select Market, the Nasdaq Global Market, and the Nasdaq Capital Market, also gives smaller and mid-sized gambling companies a clear path to list while they are still growing, with the option to move up to higher tiers as they meet additional requirements.

That said, not every major gambling company has chosen NASDAQ. Flutter Entertainment moved its primary US listing to the New York Stock Exchange in January 2024, and MGM Resorts International has long been listed on the NYSE. Readers looking at the sector as a whole should expect to find the biggest names spread across both exchanges, not concentrated in only one.

Major NASDAQ-Listed Gambling Companies

The list below covers the most widely followed gambling-sector companies in the US public markets, grouped by their primary business focus. Some of these companies are pure-play online gambling operators, others are hybrid land-based and online operators, and a few are gambling-adjacent (affiliate marketing, racing, integrated resorts). Most are NASDAQ-listed, but a few of the biggest names in the sector are on the New York Stock Exchange instead, and those are clearly noted. Listings, tickers, and business focuses can change, so readers should verify current status through sec.gov/edgar or the exchanges themselves before acting on any information here.

DraftKings (DKNG)

DraftKings operates daily fantasy sports, online sports betting, and online casino products across a growing number of US states, with FanDuel as its principal competitor. It is frequently described as the only vertically integrated pure-play online gambling company listed on a major US exchange, because most of its peers are either hybrid land-based operators or private companies. DraftKings began trading on NASDAQ on April 24, 2020, after completing a reverse merger with Diamond Eagle Acquisition Corp. (a SPAC) and sports betting technology provider SBTech. The company's current focus is on expanding into additional states as regulations allow, defending its sports betting market share, and growing its online casino footprint.

• Ticker: DKNG
• Primary listing: NASDAQ
• Business: online sports betting and iGaming

Flutter Entertainment (FLUT)

Flutter Entertainment is a global gambling group that owns FanDuel (the largest US online sportsbook by market share), Paddy Power, Betfair, Sky Betting & Gaming, PokerStars, and several other major brands. FanDuel holds approximately 44% of the US online sports betting market, making Flutter the dominant force in US sports betting, even though it is an Irish-headquartered company with a UK listing history. Flutter added a secondary US listing in January 2024 on the New York Stock Exchange, not NASDAQ, and its primary listing later moved fully to the NYSE. It is included here because any meaningful list of publicly traded US gambling operators would be incomplete without it, but readers should note the exchange distinction.

• Ticker: FLUT
• Primary US listing: NYSE (not NASDAQ)
• Business: global online sports betting and gaming

Penn Entertainment (PENN)

Penn Entertainment operates more than 40 land-based casino and racing properties across North America, alongside an online sports betting and iGaming business. The company's online segment was rebranded from Barstool Sportsbook to ESPN Bet in 2023 under a 10-year commercial deal with ESPN. In November 2025, Penn and ESPN announced an early termination of the ESPN Bet alliance after results underperformed expectations, and the company has been actively restructuring its online strategy since. Penn sits in the hybrid category, with a traditional casino business that is still larger than its online operations, but an online segment that gets the bulk of investor attention.

• Ticker: PENN
• Primary listing: NASDAQ
• Business: land-based casinos, racing, and online betting and gaming

Churchill Downs (CHDN)

Churchill Downs operates the historic Kentucky Derby at its namesake racetrack and owns a portfolio of racing venues, regional casinos, and historical racing machines across several US states. The company also runs TwinSpires, one of the largest online horse racing betting platforms in the United States. Churchill Downs is one of the oldest listed gambling companies on NASDAQ, having gone public decades before the current generation of digital sports betting operators emerged. Its business is a balanced mix of racing, casinos, and online wagering, giving it a more diversified revenue profile than most newer operators on this list.

• Ticker: CHDN
• Primary listing: NASDAQ
• Business: horse racing, regional casinos, and online wagering

Boyd Gaming (BYD)

Boyd Gaming operates 28 casino properties across 10 US states, making it one of the larger regional casino operators in the country. In addition to its core brick-and-mortar business, Boyd holds a 5% ownership stake in FanDuel through a partnership with Flutter Entertainment, which gives the company meaningful indirect exposure to the growth of US online sports betting without running its own online platform at scale. Boyd is primarily a land-based story with a useful online kicker.

• Ticker: BYD
• Primary listing: NYSE
• Business: regional US casinos with online sports betting exposure via FanDuel

Bally's Corporation (BALY)

Bally's Corporation operates land-based casinos across multiple US states, online casino and sportsbook products under the Bally's brand, and online bingo operations through the 2021 Gamesys acquisition. The current Bally's was formed through the 2020 rebrand of Twin River Worldwide Holdings and subsequent major acquisitions that expanded its footprint across both land-based and online operations. The company has been an active acquirer in iGaming and has also been the subject of multiple take-private acquisition attempts in recent years, which is a recurring pattern among mid-cap gambling operators.

• Ticker: BALY
• Primary listing: NYSE
• Business: land-based and online casino operator

Rush Street Interactive (RSI)

Rush Street Interactive operates the BetRivers and PlaySugarHouse online casino and sportsbook brands across a portfolio of US states, as well as a meaningful presence in Latin American iGaming markets. The company was listed in December 2020 via a SPAC merger and is currently traded on the NYSE. Rush Street is smaller than DraftKings or Flutter's FanDuel but has carved out a distinctive position by moving into Latin American markets ahead of most US competitors, giving it geographic diversification that most US-focused operators lack.

• Ticker: RSI
• Primary listing: NYSE
• Business: online sports betting and iGaming in the US and Latin America

Melco Resorts & Entertainment (MLCO)

Melco Resorts & Entertainment operates integrated casino resorts in Macau and the Philippines and has a significant presence in the Asian gambling market. The company trades on NASDAQ as an American Depositary Receipt (ADR), a share type that allows US investors to trade foreign-listed companies without dealing directly with the home exchange. Melco's Macau exposure is its defining feature, making its performance highly sensitive to Chinese regulatory policy, tourism flows, and the broader economic relationship between Macau and mainland China.

• Ticker: MLCO
• Primary listing: NASDAQ (as ADR)
• Business: integrated casino resorts in Asia

How IPOs Work for Gambling Companies

An IPO (Initial Public Offering) is the process by which a private company first offers shares to the public and becomes a publicly traded company on a stock exchange. Going public gives a company access to a much larger pool of capital than private fundraising can provide, along with the visibility and credibility that come with an exchange listing. Gambling companies have used two main paths to go public in recent years: the traditional IPO and the SPAC merger.

Traditional IPO vs. SPAC Merger

A traditional IPO is the older and more established route. A private company engages one or more investment banks as underwriters, prepares a detailed prospectus (filed with the SEC as Form S-1), markets the offering to institutional investors through what is known as a roadshow, and sets an initial share price on the day of listing based on the demand the underwriters have gathered. The process typically takes 6 to 12 months from the initial decision to the first day of trading, and the company is exposed to whatever market conditions exist at the time of pricing. A bad market window can force a company to delay the offering or accept a lower valuation than it had hoped for.

A SPAC merger takes a different route. A SPAC, also called a Special Purpose Acquisition Company or a blank-check company, is an already listed shell company that has raised capital solely to acquire a private business. When a SPAC finds a target, the two companies merge, and the private company inherits the SPAC's listing and the capital the SPAC has held in trust. The process is faster, typically 3 to 6 months from announcement to close, and offers more certainty on timing and valuation than a traditional IPO. The trade-off is that SPAC mergers usually result in more dilution on the cap table due to the sponsor's promos (the shares the SPAC founders retain as compensation) and any additional investor incentives built into the deal.

Why Gambling Companies Used SPACs So Heavily in 2020–2021

The SPAC boom of 2020 and 2021 overlapped almost exactly with the rapid state-by-state legalization of online sports betting in the United States. The US Supreme Court's 2018 decision in Murphy v. NCAA cleared the path for states to legalize sports betting individually, and in the years that followed, operators needed large amounts of capital quickly to fund customer acquisition, brand-building, and market entry in each newly legal state. Public markets were the only realistic source of that kind of capital, and SPACs offered the fastest route to access them.

DraftKings was the highest-profile gambling SPAC of this period. The company went public on NASDAQ through a merger with Diamond Eagle Acquisition Corp. on April 24, 2020, at an implied market cap above $3 billion. The timing looked odd on the surface, since professional sports were largely suspended due to the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the listing was successful, and DraftKings' share price more than doubled in the weeks that followed.

Rush Street Interactive, Golden Nugget Online Gaming, and sports data company Genius Sports all used SPAC structures during the same window, and several other gambling and gambling-adjacent companies followed. Performance since has varied widely. Some SPAC-listed gambling companies have grown into established operators with durable market positions. Others have traded well below their initial listing prices, been acquired, or been taken private after failing to deliver on the growth projections built into their merger valuations. The SPAC boom cooled sharply in 2022 as interest rates rose and investor appetite for speculative listings faded, and few gambling companies have used SPACs since.

SEC Filings: What Investors and Informed Players Should Know

Every US-listed company, including every gambling company covered in this article, is required to file regular disclosure documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These filings are the primary source of verified financial and operational information about a public company, and they are freely available to anyone with an internet connection. For informed readers who want to evaluate a gambling operator's underlying business rather than trust marketing pages, these filings are the right place to start. Three filing types matter most.

• The 10-K annual report. The 10-K is a comprehensive annual report filed within 60 to 90 days of the end of a company's fiscal year, with larger companies held to the shorter deadline. It contains audited financial statements, a detailed description of the business, an extensive section on risk factors, executive compensation information, and management's discussion and analysis of the prior year's performance. For gambling companies specifically, the risk factors section is unusually informative. It typically covers regulatory risks by market, pending litigation, responsible gambling concerns, competitive threats, and the impact of potential tax policy changes on state-level profitability. Reading the risk factors in a DraftKings or Penn Entertainment 10-K provides a clearer picture of the real challenges facing US online gambling than most industry coverage.
• The 10-Q quarterly report. The 10-Q is filed within 40 to 45 days of the end of each of the first three fiscal quarters. The fourth-quarter results are reported in the 10-K rather than in a separate 10-Q. Quarterly filings contain unaudited financial statements, a shorter version of the business discussion found in the 10-K, and any significant updates to the risk factors since the last annual report. For gambling companies, 10-Q filings are where operational metrics become visible. Quarterly revenue, active player numbers, state-by-state sports betting handle, online casino gross gaming revenue, and customer acquisition costs are all disclosed here. Industry analysts watch these filings closely because they provide the clearest short-term picture of how each operator is performing against its peers.
• The 8-K current event report. The 8-K is a shorter filing submitted within four business days of any material event that a reasonable investor would want to know about between regular quarterly filings. The range of events that trigger an 8-K is broad, including entering into or terminating major contracts, senior executive changes, mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, changes to credit agreements, and bankruptcy filings. Penn Entertainment's November 2025 announcement of the early termination of its ESPN Bet alliance was disclosed through an 8-K filing, which is a useful illustration of the kind of material event this filing category captures. When an operator makes a major strategic shift or faces a regulatory action, the 8-K is often the first place investors see the news in its official form.

All SEC filings are freely available through the SEC's EDGAR system at sec.gov/edgar. Users can search by company name or ticker symbol to pull up a complete filing history stretching back decades, with full-text search across all documents. The filings themselves are available in several formats, including plain HTML, PDF, and structured XBRL data that can be analyzed programmatically.

Listings and Delistings: When Companies Leave the Public Markets

Delisting is the process of removing a company's shares from an exchange, and it happens far more often than most retail investors realize. Delistings come in two main forms. Voluntary delisting occurs when a company is acquired by a larger entity, taken private by a buyout firm, or chooses to relist on a different exchange. Involuntary delisting occurs when a company fails to meet the exchange's minimum listing requirements, which include rules such as a $1 minimum share price, minimum market capitalization thresholds, minimum shareholder equity, and timely filing of SEC reports. NASDAQ enforces these rules continuously, and gambling companies are not exempt.

The exchange issues a formal deficiency notice and gives the company a compliance period when it falls below NASDAQ's thresholds, typically 180 calendar days, to return to compliance. Companies generally respond in one of two ways: they wait for the share price to recover organically, or they execute a reverse stock split that consolidates multiple shares into a single share to push the per-share price above the threshold. Reverse splits solve the listing problem but do nothing to improve the underlying business, which is why they are often viewed as a warning sign rather than a fix.

The gambling sector has seen a steady flow of listings and delistings in recent years. SciPlay, a social casino operator, was taken private by its parent company Light & Wonder in 2023, ending its independent public listing. Golden Nugget Online Gaming was acquired by DraftKings in 2022 after a brief post-SPAC run as a standalone public company. Several smaller gambling SPACs from the 2020 and 2021 wave either underperformed, were acquired at depressed valuations, or wound down entirely after failing to build sustainable businesses.

What This Means for Players

The public listing status of an online casino or sportsbook is not a guarantee of quality, but it does provide a layer of transparency that private operators cannot offer. A company listed on NASDAQ or the NYSE is subject to auditor oversight, continuous SEC disclosure requirements, shareholder accountability, and the market scrutiny that can have real consequences when management makes poor decisions. A private operator can quietly change its payment policies, hide its financial position, or shift its strategy without anyone outside the company noticing until it directly affects players. A public operator cannot, because those changes have to be disclosed.

For a player performing due diligence on an operator, checking whether the parent company is publicly listed and glancing at the most recent 10-K or 10-Q provides real information that no marketing page will give. Consistent positive cash flow, growing active player counts, and a clean regulatory record in recent filings suggest an operator that is financially stable and operating within the rules. Recurring going-concern warnings, unresolved regulatory investigations, or declining revenue trends in the parent company's filings suggest the opposite. A player's deposit is ultimately backed by the operator's financial health, which is exactly what SEC filings disclose.

That said, publicly listed operators are not automatically better than privately held ones. Many excellent online casinos are private companies licensed by the UK Gambling Commission, the Malta Gaming Authority, or similar regulators, and licensing standards often matter more for day-to-day player safety than stock market listings do. A well-regulated private operator with a clean record is a safer destination than a publicly listed operator facing serious financial distress. Listing status is one data point among several, not the single factor that decides whether an operator is worth playing at.