There is something of the ‘how long is a piece of string’ about this question. It is very difficult to get exact figures for how many people are employed by companies at any given time, thanks in no small part to the fact that there will be a relatively large turnover of staff in a lot of gambling businesses.
It is also worth considering what we mean by ‘gambling.’ Are we thinking of the casino chains that have premises in Las Vegas, for example? If so, do we include the likes of cleaners and maintenance people as being employed ‘in gambling’? It isn’t easy to answer.
On top of that, gambling is a fast-moving industry and the various companies involved in it are regularly involved in takeover and mergers to the extent that they might well have seen more people join their ranks since the time of publishing. That being said, we can get at least some sense of how many people are employed in the world of gambling by looking at the official figures that companies publish.
It is important to acknowledge that these figures are approximate rather than exact. There are some big companies involved in the world of gambling, but who might be the biggest?
Looking At The Stats
| Company | ~Revenue | ~ Number Of Employees |
|---|---|---|
| DraftKings Inc | $1.86 billion | 3,400 |
| Light & Wonder Inc | $2.41 billion | 9,000 |
| La Française des Jeux Société anonyme | $2.48 billion | 2,200 |
| Wynn Resorts Limited | $3.8 billion | 30,200 |
| Bet365 Group Limited | $3.8 billion | 5,500 |
| Las Vegas Sands Corp | $4 billion | 44,500 |
| International Game Technology PLC | $4.18 billion | 12,000 |
| Entain PLC | $5 billion | 10,000 |
| PENN Entertainment Inc | $6.4 billion | 22,000 |
| Flutter Entertainment PLC | $7.66 billion | 21,500 |
| Caesars Entertainment INC | $10.59 billion | 54,000 |
| MGM Resorts International | $12.55 billion | 74,500 |
The best thing that we can do to work out which company can be considered the biggest employer in gambling is to have a look at the stats around employment.
For the purposes of keeping things relatively simple, we have chosen to limit the companies that we’re looking at to top ones in terms of revenue. After all, it is unlikely that a company with a small revenue figure is likely to have a huge number of employees that we’d need to think about.
You can see from the table that, at least roughly speaking, the number of employed matches the revenue of the company.
Why Companies Employ The People They Do
In order to better understand how many people there are being employed by the various companies, we need to consider what it is that they offer. It is interesting that Bet365 has quite a large revenue, for example, but relatively few employees.
That is because the company operates almost exclusively online. Whilst it might have the likes of live casinos on offer, such operations are usually carried out by other companies that Bet365 gives the work to. Even if not, they are hardly big enough operations to mean that the number of employees would shoot up accordingly.
In fact, the majority of companies on the list with relatively few employees are those that operate mostly online. This means that they can work with only a small number of employees, keeping the operating costs down as much as possible and increasing their profit accordingly.
After all, if you don’t need to hire many people then you don’t need to pay many people a wage, meaning that the majority of the money that you make is profit. It also explains why the likes of Denise Coates of Bet365 can justify being paid such incredible sums at the end of the working year.
Who The Big Employers Have On Their Books
The interesting thing about the biggest companies in terms of employees is that they offer more than just gambling. MGM Resorts International are predominantly based in the United States of America and operate not only casinos but also hotels and resorts.
Is it right to consider them a big employer of people in the gambling industry when you bear in mind that many of the employees will the likes of cleaners, porters and receptionists in their hotels? That is something that is obviously up for some debate, but it is all but impossible to figure out which employees work where across the business.
The same is obviously true of Caesars Entertainment, who are also well-known thanks to their venues in the likes of Las Vegas. One of the more interesting names high up on the list is that of Flutter Entertainment. Flutter is the re-branded name of the company formerly known as Paddy Power Betfair.
As well as brands such as FanDuel, PokerStars and Sky Betting & Gaming, which will mostly be online, the company also runs thousands of betting shops around the United Kingdom and Ireland. They all need to be manned by physical staff, bumping up the employment numbers.