As US NFL Sportsbook Growth Stalls, Europe Shows Another Path

U.S. sportsbooks are heading into the 2026 NFL season with their weakest growth outlook since legal sports betting began expanding across the country, just as the league expands its European schedule and established operators there report increasingly strong betting activity around locally staged games.

The American Gaming Association (AGA) expects U.S. sportsbooks to take $29.5 billion in NFL wagers this season, virtually unchanged from the $29.4 billion it estimates was wagered last year.

H2 Gambling Capital is more cautious, forecasting U.S. regulated football betting handle of $31.4 billion during the NFL season, down 0.8%, even as it estimates underlying demand will grow by approximately 4%.

Citizens Equity Research offers a more optimistic view, projecting approximately 5% growth in regulated football wagering. However, its forecast encompasses broader football and is not directly comparable to the NFL-specific AGA and H2 estimates.

The forecasts differ over the extent of the U.S. slowdown. But across the Atlantic, a different NFL betting market has been taking shape.

Europe remains substantially smaller, and there is no continent-wide figure for NFL wagering. Yet data from operators already established in the U.K., Ireland and Germany shows the league has developed into a meaningful betting product, with locally staged games producing some of the clearest increases in engagement.

The distinction is important: Rather than representing an expansion opportunity for U.S. sportsbooks, Europe provides a separate test of how much further NFL betting can grow as the league expands internationally.

NFL Betting Has Gained Ground in Europe

The clearest historical growth has come from the U.K. and Ireland.

Flutter said in September 2025 that active NFL customers at Paddy Power had increased 30% during the previous year and were four times higher than in 2021.

The sport’s position within Paddy Power’s customer base had already changed considerably. American football ranked 10th among its active U.K. and Irish betting customers in 2019 but had risen to third by 2024, behind only soccer and horse racing.

Entain reported a similar trend during the opening portion of the 2024 NFL season, when the number of customers betting on the NFL through Ladbrokes and Coral increased 65% year over year. Bets rose 60%, and stakes increased 46%.

More recent data suggests engagement around the league’s biggest event has continued to deepen. Around Super Bowl LX in February, Entain reported that unique U.K. bet slips placed after midnight increased for a third consecutive year, with late-night betting activity up 13% since 2023.

Germany, however, shows why Europe cannot be treated as one NFL betting market.

Germany Shows a More Mature NFL Betting Market

Fresh data provided to Gambling Insider by Tipico shows the NFL has established a remarkably stable position in Germany. During its September-to-February season, the NFL has consistently ranked fifth by betting turnover at Tipico over the past five years.

The Super Bowl operates on another level. Tipico said it is generally the most-bet event on the day it takes place, while American football typically ranks as the second- or third-largest sport overall on Super Bowl Sunday.

The Super Bowl, therefore, is still an outlier as turnover surges to a level comparable to that generated by a leading Bundesliga fixture, such as Bayern Munich vs. Borussia Dortmund, showing this event has gone truly mainstream in Germany,” Tipico told Gambling Insider.

Super Bowl turnover is approximately 10 times that of an NFL playoff game and 30 times that of an average regular-season matchup. Yet average regular-season turnover has remained broadly stable at Tipico over the past five seasons, declining slightly last season.

That is particularly notable because NFL audiences in Germany have continued to grow. Super Bowl LX on RTL averaged 1.30 million viewers and peaked at 1.87 million. At the same time, the broadcaster said its regular-season 19:00 slot delivered its highest NFL free-TV shares for a third consecutive season.

Rising audiences without a corresponding increase in average betting turnover suggest a conversion challenge rather than simply an interest problem.

There are also differences in how German customers wager. Prematch betting remains considerably more important than live betting at Tipico, with turnover split approximately two-to-one. The operator believes the time difference is likely one factor, as late-night games naturally limit retail and live wagering.

International Games Create the Clearest Betting Spike

Where Tipico has recorded unmistakable growth is around NFL games staged in Germany.

The league’s first German regular-season game in 2022 generated approximately 2.5 times the turnover of an average NFL matchup. That increased to 3.3 times in 2024 and 3.7 times in 2025.

The German games are therefore increasingly powerful individual betting events, but have not yet produced a measurable long-term increase in betting activity across the entire NFL season,” Tipico said.

A similar pattern has emerged elsewhere.

During the 2024 London series, active Paddy Power customers betting on the games increased by 25% year over year, and stakes rose by 30%.

Then, in September 2025, the Pittsburgh Steelers-Minnesota Vikings game in Dublin became Paddy Power’s largest regular-season NFL game ever for both active customers and betting volume across the U.K. and Ireland.

Those figures make international games particularly interesting for sportsbooks. They create local betting occasions around a sport whose regular-season games are otherwise played thousands of miles away and, frequently, late at night for European customers.

Operators have responded commercially. Paddy Power became the NFL’s official sportsbook partner in the U.K. and Ireland in 2025, while Entain’s bwin has held NFL betting partnerships across Germany, Austria and Spain.

More European Games Do Not Guarantee More Growth

The NFL is now accelerating the international strategy alongside which those betting spikes have emerged.

The 2026 season features a record nine international games, six of them in Europe. Owners have also approved increasing the maximum number of league-organized international games from eight to 10 beginning in 2027.

But increasing supply comes with risks.

London, the NFL’s longest-established European market, is showing some signs of pressure around ticket affordability and demand.

While tickets for the Philadelphia Eagles-Jacksonville Jaguars sold strongly, tickets for the Indianapolis Colts-Washington Commanders remained available two months after going on public sale. The Jaguars-Houston Texans game at Wembley also had significant availability in early September.

Fans interviewed by the Associated Press cited rising prices and “team fatigue.” One longtime fan told the AP that a Wembley seat costing him £66 ($89) in 2016 is priced at £146 ($197) this year. Adult tickets for this year’s London games reach nearly £300 ($406). For context, Gambling Insider purchased a hospitality ticket for £77 ($104) for a London game in 2024, less than the starting price for some 2026 fixtures.

That presents a particular consideration in Europe, where the NFL competes for attention and discretionary spending with established domestic sports, particularly soccer. Fans who once traveled to London also increasingly have alternatives closer to home as the league expands into Germany, Spain, Ireland and France.

The NFL maintains that the U.K. remains one of its most important international markets and says more than three million fans have attended regular-season games in London since 2007.

Ticket availability does not necessarily translate into weaker betting activity. But it highlights the challenge of maintaining the scarcity and appeal surrounding international games as their number increases.

Europe Offers an Opportunity, Not a Simple Growth Story

The contrast is less about U.S. sportsbooks finding growth overseas than about two NFL betting markets developing along different paths.

In the U.S., a mature sportsbook sector is facing its weakest growth outlook in years. In Europe, established operators are still testing how far the NFL’s expanding international footprint can deepen betting engagement.

The strongest evidence so far comes from games played locally. Dublin became Paddy Power’s biggest regular-season NFL betting event. At the same time, turnover on games staged in Germany has grown from approximately 2.5 times that of an average matchup in 2022 to 3.7 times in 2025.

The challenge now is turning those individual spikes into sustained engagement beyond the international schedule.