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A big topic when investors talk with the heads of publicly traded sports books the past year has been the emergence of Latin America, especially with the launch of the regulated betting market in Brazil three weeks ago. That’s rewarded companies that are rushing to expand in the southern hemisphere, while U.S. sports betting stocks are less in favor. But there remain plenty of opportunities for growth in the U.S.

Latin America is expected to be a $54 billion sports betting market by 2026, up 150% from 2023, according to PagSeguro International, a financial services provider to sportsbooks. The growth potential has Wall Street excited: The two best U.S. traded betting stocks in 2024 were Codere Online, a sportsbook focused solely on Latin America that saw its stock price more than double last year, and Rush Street Interactive, shares of which tripled thanks to pivoting to Latin American markets Mexico, Colombia and Peru, where Rush Street is enjoying much faster growth than in the U.S.

The rush into the southern hemisphere—at least 113 companies applied to launch on-shore sportsbooks in Brazil, for instance—stands in contrast to the U.S., where the gold rush seems to have ended. In July, Super Group left the U.S. a little more than three years after entering. Super Group believed its global Betway brand and marketing deals with 10 NBA and NHL franchises and on Ted Lasso would draw in Americans, but found high taxes a discouragement in some markets and marketing spending too fierce in others. Three months before Betway’s withdrawal, 888 Holdings paid Authentic Brands $50 million to wash its hands of the Sports Illustrated-branded U.S. sportsbook. And a number of firms decided not to compete in individual states too, including Wynn and Betr, which both abandoned their Massachusetts licenses last year.

But there is still plenty of growth to be had in the U.S. This year, online sports betting will launch in Missouri and it’s expected to be sizable, according to stock analysts at Jefferies Group. The brokerage says Missouri should be a $500 million gross gaming revenue (GGR) market based on its population being similar to Maryland and Colorado, which are $600 million and $465 million GGR markets, respectively. The U.S. produced $12.7 billion in GGR in 2024, according to data compiled by Sportsbook Review.

While Missouri is the only state certain to open to online sports betting this year, other states are strong possibilities: Texas, Minnesota, Georgia, South Carolina and Oklahoma. Each of those states has some political movement toward legalization of varying degrees, according to Jefferies. A seventh state, Mississippi, saw legislation introduced last week to allow online sports betting too, although similar legislation died last year. Lawmakers in Alabama are expected to try this year, as well, although like Mississippi last year’s push failed in the state legislature.

How big can new state markets be? A half dozen or so ones with a reasonable chance of opening up this year could increase the U.S. sports betting market by a third. GeoComply, a company which identifies user locations to fence media rights and gambling access, estimated that the four largest of the potential markets cited by Jefferies—Texas, Georgia, South Carolina and Minnesota—would add $3.6 billion in gross gaming revenue to the market once they were fully up and running. Another three states GeoComply looked at—Alabama, Mississippi and Nebraska—would another $700 million GGR.

GeoComply made its estimates based on population and an average 15% GGR tax, but noted anecdotally that demand seems to be rising in those areas. The company says during NFL season it blocked 4.5 million attempts to access sports books in Texas, a 56% increase over 2023. It stopped another 27 million bettor attempts to bet online in the other six states it looked at, a number up sharply from 2023. There is a single cornfield in Iowa, just over the line from Nebraska, that has 2,800 active accounts—certainly Nebraska residents who drive to place bets, GeoComply says.

Jefferies, which didn’t publish estimates on new states besides Missouri, believes steady expansion of U.S. betting can still be significant. The firm says DraftKings stock could triple if large states were added to the market over time. Ideally, the firm says, Texas, California and Florida would come to market staggered to minimize capital expenditures by sportsbooks (they would need to spend more to compete if multiple states launched at once). But that ideal scenario faces some hurdles: Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick, who leads the state senate, singlehandedly has killed sports betting legislation before; California ballot initiatives to legalize wagering failed at the ballot box; and the Seminole tribe has a legal stranglehold over online wagering in Florida, though Jefferies suggests the tribe is probably open to licensing deals.

Still, state level expansion doesn’t appear necessary for growth. The rise of in-game betting and parlays got Jefferies to bump up its estimate for the U.S. market in its look at the market, published last week. By 2030, existing online sports betting states should have a total addressable market of $33.3 billion in GGR, compared to its tally of $12.6 billion in 2024. “’Average handle per capita has grown 35%/25%/15% across the past three years of legalization, and we expect a long-run growth rate of about 12%,” the report stated. “Even the older states are growing at double-digit rates.”

And there is belief among some that the U.S. market won’t be a duopoly of FanDuel and DraftKings, which currently claim a majority of market share. Fanatics, for its part, has built itself into probably the fourth-largest sportsbook in the country over just the past year, believing the market has more potential than Wall Street currently gives credit for.

“One: we think that TAM [total addressable market] in gaming is tremendous and growing. Every TAM study is rendered worthless by the subsequent TAM study that sees the business being bigger and bigger and bigger,” said Fanatics CFO Glenn Schiffman in an interview with Sportico. “Two: we look to Europe where there are four to five profitable business per market. We think a bunch of people can not only survive, but prosper.”