Public Data as a Competitive Weapon: Building a Searchable VGT Performance Database
United Gaming Advisors — September 29, 2026
Illinois publishes monthly video gaming results for every licensed location. Almost nobody outside the industry uses them, because they're scattered across spreadsheets. Monte Cristo Gaming turned two years of that data into a searchable public tool: the Illinois Video Gaming Performance Database.
What it covers
July 2024 through June 2026: more than 8,900 establishments, over 50,000 active terminals, and more than $6.5 billion in net terminal income, with a statewide average hold of about 9.2%. Users can filter by name, city, county, date range, license type, NTI, win per unit and hold, view results on a map or heatmap, and export to CSV.
Why public data is a competitive weapon
Trust. When an operator hands an owner the same numbers regulators publish, the projection stops being a sales claim.
Benchmarking. Owners can compare their own win per unit to similar businesses nearby. Locations that trail their peers start asking their current operator hard questions.
Targeting. For an operator, the same data identifies underperforming locations, strong markets and white space before a single sales call.
Diligence. For buyers and lenders evaluating a route, location-level history is the foundation of any valuation.
Beyond Illinois
Several distributed gaming jurisdictions publish location-level or municipal-level results. Where they do, the same approach applies: collect it, clean it, make it searchable, and put it in front of the people making decisions. Where they don't, the absence of data is itself an advantage for whoever builds the best proxy. We help operators, investors and lenders do both as part of performance audits, competitive benchmarking and M&A diligence.
About this series: Monte Cristo Gaming is an Illinois video gaming terminal operator founded by United Gaming Advisors principal Chris Schink. It is a separate company from United Gaming Advisors. We use its owner-facing tools as working examples of what we help operators build in other markets. United Gaming Advisors does not currently offer consulting services in Illinois.
Building owner-facing tools, a loyalty program or a market-entry plan in your jurisdiction? Book a consultation.
