Why Mayor Johnson Is Fighting to Keep Video Gambling Out of Chicago
Johnson is trying to keep video gambling out of Chicago. The crime data, Bally’s deal, and addiction concerns explain why.
Mayor Brandon Johnson moved this week to repeal a provision of Chicago’s 2026 budget that would have legalized video gambling terminals across the city, asking the City Council’s Workforce Development Committee to consider an ordinance reversing a decision the full Council made just months ago. Johnson has never sent the official notification to the Illinois Gaming Board needed to trigger the licensing process, despite a budget that assumed Chicago would generate $6.8 million this year by licensing newly legalized terminals at the roughly 3,300 establishments eligible to host them.
The aldermen who pushed video gambling into the budget are furious. City Council Dean Anthony Beale, the prime mover behind lifting Chicago’s ban, told the Sun-Times that Johnson’s administration is “behind the scenes secretly trying to repeal this,” and he and at least 15 colleagues went around the mayor and sent their own notification letter directly to the Gaming Board. The fight has exposed a genuine split within the council, with Johnson’s allies attempting ward-by-ward bans while opponents blocked those moves to prevent what they described as a budget hole.
Johnson has not fully explained his position publicly, and he really does not need to. The reasons are not hard to identify.
Chicago Is the Last Big Market, and the Video Gambling Industry Knows It
To understand what is actually at stake in this fight, it helps to know where Illinois video gambling stands across the state. The industry has grown significantly since terminals were first legalized in 2012, but that growth is now incremental rather than structural. The number of establishments offering video gambling grew by 2.3% in 2025, terminals grew by 1.8%, and municipal revenue distributions rose by 5% to roughly $160 million collectively. Those are healthy numbers for a mature industry. They are not the numbers of an industry with significant room left to expand in the markets it already occupies.
By the end of fiscal year 2024, there were more than 48,000 video gambling terminals operating across Illinois, the equivalent of more than 40 full-size casinos. The rest of the state is, by any reasonable measure, saturated. Adding more machines to existing markets produces diminishing returns. The terminal operators who control this industry, with the top five companies holding nearly 50% of the market and the industry’s lobbying arm having contributed more than $830,000 to Illinois political campaigns since 2009, have spent years trying to crack the one market that has always been off-limits. Chicago, with 3,300 eligible establishments, represents a growth opportunity that does not exist elsewhere in the state, as the rest of the state begins to level off.
That is why the industry fought hard to get VGTs into the city budget, and why Johnson’s resistance carries real political cost. The lobby that has repeatedly blocked iGaming legislation in Springfield has significant leverage at the state level. Taking it on over Chicago is not a small decision.
Three Reasons the Windy City Has Always Said No to VGTs
Chicago’s long resistance to video gambling is not primarily ideological. It reflects three concrete concerns that have accumulated over more than a decade of watching VGTs operate in the rest of Illinois.
The first is Bally’s. Newly appointed Ald. Walter Burnett, whose Near West Side ward includes the $1.7 billion Bally’s casino and entertainment complex under construction in River West, supports repeal and has cited the potential to cannibalize Bally’s revenues as a reason. Chicago negotiated significant financial commitments from Bally’s as part of the casino deal. Flooding the city with thousands of VGTs before Bally’s opens is a reasonable way to undermine those commitments and the tax revenue that depends on them. The concern is not hypothetical: Illinois’ nine legacy riverboat casinos have seen revenues decline for nine consecutive years, a pattern widely attributed in part to VGT competition in their markets.
The second is gambling addiction. Chicago aldermen in wards with high rates of gambling addiction and substance abuse have been among the loudest opponents. The VGT product is designed for sustained, repetitive play in neighborhood bars and restaurants, accessible to anyone who walks in at any hour. Illinois is one of only two states with legalized video gambling that has never conducted research to measure the prevalence of gambling addiction, which means the city would be expanding access to a product whose social costs have never been properly quantified, even by the state that legalized it.
The third is a reason that always comes up in some form of opposition to expanding gambling, and that is crime. This is the argument that has gained the most concrete evidentiary support in the past year. At least 473 burglaries were reported at Illinois video gambling establishments in 2025, up from 358 in 2024, with $2.7 million stolen. Many incidents involve crews of masked bandits smashing through front doors and windows with sledgehammers. The pattern is straightforward: establishments hosting VGTs have more cash on hand than comparable bars and restaurants, making them more attractive targets. Bringing thousands of VGT locations into a city that already manages significant public safety challenges is not a cost-free decision.
VGT Lobbyists Thought They Finally Cracked the Code in Chicago, but the Fight Goes On
Johnson’s position is defensible on the merits. Whether it is politically sustainable is a different question. Workforce Development Chair Mike Rodriguez told the Sun-Times they are “whipping it,” attempting to round up votes for a citywide repeal, and acknowledged that some council members are worried that a VGT rollout could cause Bally’s to balk on its financial commitments to the city. The vote count is uncertain enough that the outcome is not clear even to people close to the process.
What is clear is that the VGT lobby did not get into the Chicago budget by accident. It got there because the industry has spent years cultivating relationships at every level of Illinois government, because the Council majority that passed the alternative budget needed revenue to replace Johnson’s rejected corporate head tax, and because the $6.8 million figure was easy to incorporate into a spreadsheet without fully accounting for the costs on the other side of the ledger.
Johnson is now trying to put that genie back in the bottle through a committee that his opponents say is the wrong venue for the repeal in the first place. Beale has argued that something passed by the License Committee cannot be repealed by the Workforce Development Committee, a procedural objection that could complicate Johnson’s path even if he secures the votes.
The VGT industry has long waited to enter Chicago. That fight will continue for the foreseeable future in The Windy City.
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