The President and CEO of the American Gaming Association discusses the opportunities, challenges and future direction of the U.S. gaming industry. By David McKee
It’s not easy being the president and CEO of the American Gaming Association. Not only are you the political face of a controversial industry, you’re often having to play defense. AGA prexy Bill Miller faces almost daily provocations, ranging from that congressional candidate that wants to ban gambling ads entirely to those incursions onto the industry’s turf by unlicensed rivals.
One of Miller’s primary objectives – federal action against offshore iGaming – remains unrealized. He spent four years prodding Attorney General Merrick Garland, to no avail, and Attorney General Pam Bondi has come and gone without lifting a finger to help. Will incoming Todd Blanche be any better?
That’s the kind of challenge Miller faces and which he does with good spirits and boundless optimism. The Trump administration has not made that task any easier. Over a recent weekend, Donald Trump recently spammed out an endorsement for Cyprus-based Internet casino Stake, something that would be anathema to licensed, law-abiding United States-based firms.
Doubling down on the poke in the eye, Trump then went on Truth Social to endorse the aggressive prediction-market expansionism of Commodity & Futures Commission Chairman Michael Selig (whom Miller recently called “a joke”) with regard to sports betting. Trump’s pedal-to-the-metal approach to iGaming and sports betting seemed an apt jumping-off point for Casino Life’s conversation with Miller one fine June morning …
How difficult does it make your job when, in the space of a week, the president of the United States endorses an offshore casino and calls for unrestricted prediction-market growth in the U.S.?
I didn’t take this job because it was easy. [laughs] I took this job because it’s challenging and because I get an opportunity to represent commercial operators, tribal operators, sports books, manufacturers,domestic, international. This prediction-market issue is one where we clearly have a different point of view as it relates to sports betting and iGaming.
I say it all the time: We don’t have any issue with the president. We don’t have any issue with making America the crypto capital of the world. We don’t have any issue, generally, with prediction markets, although the insider elements, some of the assassination [bets] that are very outside of the lanes of the AGA, are problematic for different reasons. Our issue is really a simple one. It’s that the federal government was never authorized – or intended – to be the official regulator of sports betting in America.
Does the Stake endorsement end any hopes of the Department of Justice cracking down on offshore casinos?
There’s a lot of nefarious characters that operate outside of the borders of the United States that consumers have access to and that’s been a problem. It was a problem that we raised to the last administration, in terms of prioritizing this, and we’ve done the same thing in this administration. Now, I understand the Department of Justice has a lot on their plate. They have to deal with global terrorism, international crime rings and things like that.
What we continue to ask is, because we have a robust, legal, regulated system here in the United States, that the Department of Justice and State Department should focus on illegal gambling, because they fund other illicit activities. To the degree that this administration prioritizes that more than the last administration, it’s still yet to be seen. But we’re going to continue to make that something that is an important priority.
What is the current temper of Congress on those two issues?
The Senate Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Consumer Protection was pretty uniform in terms of their concern and skepticism around whether prediction markets that are used to mimic sports bets are anything other than sports bets. On both the Republican and Democrat sides you saw pretty strong statements from both Chairman Ted Cruz and Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn, and Ranking Member John Hickenlooper and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell.
Across the dais, Republicans and Democrats were saying, ‘We don’t think it’s appropriate for this to happen through the CFTC. The courts have an opportunity to act but Congress has important role to play.
We’re seeing a backlash against gambling, especially sports betting. Why is that and what can be done to counteract it?
I don’t know that there’s a backlash per se against sports betting. It’s important to remember that we’re only seven years removed from allowing Americans to bet legally on sports. It’s a pretty nascent legal regulated industry. It doesn’t mean the industry didn’t exist. The industry existed offshore and with organized crime. The PASPA decision that was handed down in 2018 allowed for consumer protections. It allowed states to make the determinations on whether or not they wanted to offer sports betting.
The industry is working quite well with the regulators, law enforcement, making sure that there’s a deterrence that gets created when someone runs afoul of the rules of the road. Sometimes that’s being banned from the league. Sometimes it’s a scholarship getting taken away. Sometimes it’s people being fired: the Alabama baseball coach [Brad Bohannon] who bet against his own team.
Is the industry making a good enough case for itself?
We should always be doing better. The industry has an incredible story to tell. We employ 1.8 million people around the country. It was really an important moment for the industry when, during Covid, the industry got treated the same as every other American business, in terms of financial support from the federal government. That had never happened before. After 9-11, the gaming industry was carved out from relief. 2008-9, the rescue plan – the gaming industry was carved out. Hurricane Katrina, Super Storm Sandy … all situations where the gambling industry was viewed as a vice industry, therefore not appropriate to help when a disaster came.
Covid was the first time when we were actually treated like the rest of the country and that is an important inflection point. Part of it’s because there are now a thousand casinos in America. We come into cities and towns that got left behind by other industries. We create an incredible economic lift, create jobs and careers — and pay a lot of money in taxes to support social services. We always need to be vigilant about telling what the industry means and what benefits we create, but that’s required of every business in America.
Where do you stand on Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s GAME Act and other proposed advertising restrictions?
The First Amendment is an important element to advertising. The Federal Communications Commission has powers as it relates to deceptive advertising. I don’t want to focus specifically on that bill other than to say there’s always been a lot of talk about the amount of advertising, as it relates to sports betting. Advertising created a really important way to move tens of millions of people – who were betting without any consumer protections – into the legal market. I continue to assert that’s a positive. Fast-forward to where we are today. For the legal, regulated, sports betting industry advertising has been, year over year, down nine percent each year. The high-water mark was probably 2022.
What other legislation appears to have traction at this point?
We’re working hard to try and get the full, 100 percent deductibility of losses, which was a tax provision that was inserted into the “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” We think we have bipartisan support to get that done. It’s just hard to move anything in Congress right now. But we continue to hear good signals. We continue to spend a lot of time up on the Hill, making sure people understand why that’s important just from a matter of fairness.
Then clearly, prediction markets are front and center. There are a number of opportunities to provide very strong guardrails for the CFTC on what they should and shouldn’t allow. Anything resembling sports betting or iGaming is not appropriate for the CFTC. The Curtis/Schiff bill has been introduced in the Senate. There’s similar legislation in the House and we think that we’ve got a real shot. Those senators want to protect their state’s rights. For those members that have tribal populations, they know and understand what tribal sovereignty means. They also recognize that the federal government, through the CFTC, is trampling on that tribal sovereignty.
Are you seeing any dissolution in your ranks on this issue?
No, none at all. I would say the opposite. Our opponents are extremely well-funded but they don’t have any good arguments.
You have one regulator in Washington, D.C. that’s going to regulated the entire, national sports betting industry, in addition to corn futures, soybeans, oil, precious metals – and they have 500 people versus the state- and tribal-regulated system that has 8,400 people?
Every time we have an opportunity to debate our case versus theirs it’s not even a contest. They have a lot of money and they’re waving it around to a lot of legitimate organizations: leagues, broadcasters, others, in order to try and rent or purchase some legitimacy, because they can’t make the argument that what they do is as regulated as the gaming industry on a state-by-state basis. We see it every time: They’ve got great lawyers. They’ve got more money than anyone can imagine. But at the end of the day they’ve still got to go before a legislative body. They’ve still got to go before a judge and they come up with some cockamamie, twisted view that this is just like soybean futures. That there’s economic consequence to the Nationals playing the Marlins on a one o’clock Tuesday afternoon game. Just doesn’t really hold up.
Pennsylvania and Virginia are among the states wrestling with the ‘skill game’ issue. Does the AGA have a stance on this?
Very much so. We’ve been in that fight for four years now, hard. We worked hard to get Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin to veto a skill-game bill a couple of years ago. They came back with a new governor, Abigail Spanberger, and fortunately she recognized that there’s cannibalization and it’s not dissimilar to unregulated, untaxed gaming without any consumer protections.
Those people operate at a pretty significant competitive advantage. In Pennsylvania, all you do is plug the machine in and start making money, versus go through the regulatory background investigation, get licensed, pay a license fee and then pay pretty significant taxes to Pennsylvania or Virginia or Missouri. Pennsylvania is still the biggest challenge, both in terms of the number of skill games, in excess of 100,000. Resolution there is probably the most difficult. But we’ve started to see real leadership in Virginia and Missouri. My hope is we’ll see similar leadership in Pennsylvania. We’re working hard on it.
Thanks to the AGA, smoking is now on the Global Gaming Expo agenda. Why has this issue become the hill on which the industry has chosen to die
I don’t know that I would agree with that characterization …thought you might not … Different states have made different determinations as it relates to smoking. I spent a long time before I was in politics as a bartender and a DJ. I was awfully happy when they got rid of smoking in bars. But they didn’t have any good air-cleaning systems in any of the bars and restaurants I worked in. The trajectory is towards eliminating smoking. But there’s a number of complicated things to think about and the system is processing them in an appropriate way.
On the positive side, how was 2025 for the industry?
We’ve had Q1 numbers already and total GGR was about $20 billion and that’s up six percent. In terms of sports betting, it’s up 8.6 percent at $4.2 billion. iGaming is up at $1 billion. There’s definitely headwinds economically. But what we’re seeing is continued strength in the industry.
Casino Life Magazine would like to thank Bill Miller and his Public Relations Team all there help and assistance with this exclusive interview.
*** This exclusive interview was originally published in June 2026 edition of Casino Life Magazine Issue 189 Volume 22***
