Illinois added 24 locations in a year

Every month we pull the Illinois Gaming Board’s published figures and look at what they say about the market as a whole. No opinions, no projections — just the state’s own numbers, arranged so they answer a question an owner or an operator actually has.

July says something we haven’t been able to say before.

The state stopped adding locations this year

8,564 locations reported income in July, against 8,540 in July of last year. Twenty-four more, statewide, in a year.

Here is what the four years before that looked like:

• July 2022: 7,831 locations, up 334 on the year
• July 2023: 8,161, up 330
• July 2024: 8,411, up 250
• July 2025: 8,540, up 129
• July 2026: 8,564, up 24

That’s not a slowdown. That’s a stop, and it arrived faster than the trend line suggested it would. Illinois is not running out of appetite for gaming — it is running out of eligible rooms to put it in.