Mass Arbitration Statistics: AAA Data Shows 88 Campaigns in 2025 as Demands Fell to 105,000

The latest mass arbitration statistics from the American Arbitration Association (AAA) show 88 distinct mass arbitration campaigns in 2025, almost the same as the 92 it handled in 2024, even though the number of individual demands fell from about 280,000 to just under 105,000. In other words, the volume drop came from fewer giant filings rather than fewer campaigns, and a November 2, 2026 analysis by Squire Patton Boggs concludes that filing activity will stay elevated through 2027.

That distinction matters for anyone who read the headline number and concluded that mass arbitration had peaked. The count that tracks how many companies are being hit, and how many claimant firms are running inventories, barely moved. What changed was the size of the largest campaigns and, more consequentially, how cases end once they are filed: consumer dismissals on the merits all but disappeared, withdrawals doubled, settlements arrived earlier, and employment awards became more common.

This piece assembles the AAA's full-year 2025 figures, its earlier 2024 infographic, the first-half 2025 snapshot and the new Squire Patton Boggs forecast into one place, and sets out what the numbers mean for companies drafting an Arbitration Clause, respondents facing a filing, claimants' counsel and the funders who finance them.

What the AAA's 2025 mass arbitration statistics show

The AAA publishes mass arbitration data in two forms: an annual infographic (the first, covering 2024, appeared in spring 2025) and a written analysis, "Mass Arbitration in Transition: What 2025 Data Reveals About a Shifting Landscape," which covers the 2025 calendar year. The headline 2025 figures are:

• 88 unique mass arbitration campaigns, against 92 in 2024.
• 104,556 new consumer demands spread across 81 consumer caseloads.
• 269 new employment and workplace demands, according to the AAA.
• A combined total just under 105,000 individual demands, against roughly 280,000 in 2024.
• Consumer demand volume down by more than 142,000, and employment demand volume down by about 33,000, year over year.

Squire Patton Boggs adds a cumulative figure: the AAA has seen close to 250 unique mass arbitrations since 2023 alone. That is the clearest single measure of how established the tactic has become. Five years ago, coordinated filings of thousands of individual demands were a novelty associated with a handful of claimant firms and a few gig-economy and gaming respondents. Now they are a recurring line item at the country's largest arbitration provider, arriving at a pace of roughly seven or eight new campaigns a month.

The AAA's mass rules, the Supplementary Rules for Mass Arbitrations, are triggered at a Mass Filing Threshold of 25 or more similar demands in consumer and employment matters, filed by or against the same party with the same or coordinated counsel. A campaign in these statistics can therefore be anything from a few dozen demands to tens of thousands, which is why the campaign count and the demand count can move in opposite directions.

How many mass arbitrations did the AAA receive in 2025?

The AAA received 88 distinct mass arbitration campaigns in 2025, comprising just under 105,000 individual demands; 81 of those campaigns were consumer caseloads, which generated 104,556 demands. For comparison, Skadden's analysis of the 2024 infographic counted 92 campaigns that year, of which 82 were consumer and 10 were employment, carrying about 280,000 individual claims between them.

The split is lopsided in a way that is easy to miss. Consumer campaigns account for more than 99% of 2025 demand volume. Employment campaigns, which drew outsized attention in 2022 and 2023 when gig-worker and retail-employee filings tested the AAA's old fee schedule, generated only a few hundred new demands in 2025. Mass arbitration in its current form is overwhelmingly a consumer phenomenon, built on consumer-facing terms of service, privacy statutes with statutory damages, and gaming and subscription products with very large user bases.

Why did AAA mass arbitration filings drop in 2025?

AAA mass arbitration filings dropped in 2025 mainly because the very largest filings were absent: the employment decline is almost entirely attributable to one mass arbitration of about 30,000 cases filed in 2024 that had no counterpart in 2025, and the consumer decline reflects fewer mega-filings rather than fewer campaigns. Squire Patton Boggs frames it the same way: the fall in total demands reflects fewer mega-filings, not fewer mass arbitration campaigns.

The arithmetic supports that reading. Take the 30,000-case employment filing out of 2024 and the employment comparison becomes a matter of a few thousand demands. On the consumer side, the 2024 total was inflated by the sheer scale of the largest gaming and entertainment campaigns: Cooley's review of the 2024 infographic reported that gaming and entertainment alone produced more than 100,000 filings that year. In 2025 the same sector remained the largest source of new demands, but at a little over 42,000.

Three structural explanations are consistent with the data, though the AAA does not attribute the change to any of them:

1. Fee restructuring. The AAA's January 2024 mass arbitration fee schedule replaced per-case initiation fees with a flat Initiation Fee of $11,250, split $3,125 to the claimant side and $8,125 to the business side, and eliminated case management fees. That removed the most extreme up-front cost spikes that made a 50,000-demand filing so coercive, and with them some of the incentive to file at maximum scale. The site's before-and-after fee analysis walks through the numbers.
2. Gatekeeping clauses. Respondents have rewritten clauses to add Pre-Arbitration Notice, informal dispute resolution periods, claimant affirmation requirements and Batching or bellwether sequencing. These do not stop campaigns, but they slow the conversion of an advertised claimant pool into filed demands.
3. Diversification. Claimant firms are spreading inventories across more respondents and more sectors rather than concentrating on a few household names, which keeps the campaign count high while lowering the size of the biggest campaign.

Is mass arbitration declining?

No: by the measure that counts campaigns, mass arbitration is essentially flat, with 88 campaigns at the AAA in 2025 against 92 in 2024, and the drop in individual demands reflects the absence of a few mega-filings rather than a retreat by claimants' counsel. Squire Patton Boggs, a defense-side firm, put it bluntly in the title of its November 2 analysis: mass arbitration is not slowing down.

There is a second reason to resist the decline narrative. The AAA warns that its numbers fluctuate widely from year to year because single large campaigns create equally large swings. A provider-level demand count is a lagging, lumpy indicator. A single 40,000-claimant privacy campaign filed in early 2027 would erase the 2025 "drop" on its own. The campaign count, which is far less sensitive to individual filings, is the better proxy for the level of activity, and it is stable.

The AAA's data also covers only the AAA. Campaigns administered by JAMS, New Era ADR, or other providers do not appear, and respondents have increasingly designated those alternatives. Any shift of volume from the AAA to other forums would look like a decline in AAA statistics while representing no decline at all in the underlying practice.

How often do mass arbitration cases settle?

Most do: 72% of consumer mass arbitration merits cases closed in 2025 settled before an award, and 96% of those settlements came before a merits arbitrator was even appointed. On the employment side, 70% of the 1,393 employment and workplace merits cases closed in 2025 settled, down from 77% in 2024.

The early timing is the most important number in the AAA's release. It means that in the overwhelming majority of consumer campaigns that reach the merits phase, the parties resolve the claims in the window after initiation fees are paid and before per-case arbitrator costs and merits work begin. That is exactly the pressure point the fee schedule creates. The flat initiation fee gets the campaign administered and allows a Process Arbitrator to resolve threshold disputes; the expensive part comes when merits arbitrators are appointed and per-case fees, final fees and arbitrator compensation attach. Rational parties settle before that point.

Settlement is not the only exit. About 21% of consumer merits cases were withdrawn in 2025, roughly double the 10% recorded in 2024. Employment withdrawals held at about 14% in both years. Rising consumer withdrawals are consistent with more aggressive Claimant Vetting by respondents and process arbitrators, with deficiency challenges forcing claimant firms to drop demands that cannot be supported, and with global deals that resolve some claims and lead to withdrawal of the rest.

The first-half 2025 snapshot offers a campaign-level view of the same pattern. In the first six months of 2025, the AAA closed 26 mass arbitrations with at least 37,648 total claimants. None was resolved by a dismissal on the merits; all were settled, withdrawn, or administratively closed, a category that can include Administrative Closure for Fee Non-Payment.

2024 vs 2025 mass arbitration scorecard

Metric (AAA data)	2024	2025	Direction
Distinct mass arbitration campaigns	92 (82 consumer, 10 employment)	88 (81 consumer)	Flat
Individual demands, all types	~280,000	just under 105,000	Down ~62%
New consumer demands	more than 246,000 (implied)	104,556	Down >142,000
Employment/workplace demand change	n/a	about 33,000 fewer	Down, driven by one ~30,000-case 2024 filing
Consumer merits cases proceeding	>24,000	3,665	Down sharply
Consumer merits dismissals on the merits	~30%	<1%	Collapsed
Consumer merits withdrawals	~10%	~21%	Doubled
Consumer settlements before award	59% (closed cases, 2024 infographic)	72% of merits cases closed	Up
Consumer merits cases ending in award	~1%	<1%	Flat, rare
Employment merits settlements	77%	70% of 1,393	Down
Employment withdrawals	~14%	~14%	Flat
Employment mass arbitration award rate	~2%	~7%	Up

The 2024 consumer figure is implied by subtracting the reported decline from the 2025 total; the AAA reports the change rather than the base. The 2024 settlement and dismissal percentages come from the 2024 infographic as summarized in Squire Patton Boggs's 2025 year-in-review, and the 2024 and 2025 consumer settlement figures are not perfectly comparable because the 2025 figure is limited to merits cases.

How often does a mass arbitration end in an award?

Rarely: fewer than 1% of consumer mass arbitration cases that reached the merits phase and closed in 2025 ended in an Arbitral Award, compared with about 14% of individual, non-mass consumer arbitrations at the AAA. In employment mass arbitration, the award rate rose from about 2% in 2024 to about 7% in 2025, against 9% for individual employment and workplace cases.

The consumer figure confirms what practitioners already know: mass arbitration is a settlement mechanism, not an adjudication mechanism. The comparison with individual arbitration is the revealing part. An individual consumer who arbitrates alone is roughly 14 times more likely to get to an award than a claimant inside a mass campaign, because campaign-level economics push both sides to resolve claims in bulk before anyone is heard on the merits.

The employment number is the outlier and the one to watch. A move from about 2% to about 7% means employment campaigns are getting closer to the individual baseline of 9%. With fewer than 300 new employment demands in 2025, the sample is small and the percentage is sensitive to a handful of cases. But it suggests that at least some employment respondents chose to try claims to award rather than pay a campaign-wide settlement, possibly using a Bellwether Provision (Arbitration) to test a small set of claims first. If that pattern persists, awards in employment campaigns will start to generate a body of reasoned decisions that both sides can use to value the remaining inventory.

The collapse of consumer merits dismissals, from about 30% to under 1%, cuts the other way. The AAA itself suggests that one large consumer mass arbitration may have skewed the 2024 figure. If so, the 2024 number was never a reliable indicator that respondents could routinely win consumer campaigns on dispositive motions. The AAA's consumer rules, revised effective May 1, 2025, also direct arbitrators under Rule R-31 to "consider the time and cost associated with the briefing of a dispositive motion" before allowing one, which may make early merits dismissals harder to obtain in any event.

Which industries face the most mass arbitrations?

Gaming and entertainment companies face the most: the AAA reported that the Gaming/Entertainment category remained the largest source of new mass arbitration demands in 2025, with more than 42,000, after producing more than 100,000 in 2024. Retail emerged as the second-largest source in 2025, with more than 32,000 new demands, after not ranking among the top sectors in 2024.

The sector picture tracks the claims driving the campaigns. Gaming and entertainment respondents combine huge user bases, consumer-facing terms of service with arbitration provisions, and claim theories with statutory damages or straightforward restitution math, from loot-box and sweepstakes-casino gambling-loss claims to video-viewing privacy claims. The live example is the WOW Vegas campaign, in which offshore entities linked to the sweepstakes casino sued the AAA in the Southern District of New York on November 2, 2026 to try to stop a campaign that OffshoreAlert says involves 2,257 claimants; this site's coverage of that suit has the details.

Retail's rise is consistent with the migration of website-tracking and wiretap theories from class action complaints to individual arbitration demands, as consumer-facing retailers with arbitration clauses and Class Action Waiver provisions push privacy plaintiffs out of court. Commentators reviewing the 2024 infographic identified telecommunications, healthcare, financial services and technology as the other principal 2024 sectors. The AAA's 2025 analysis emphasizes gaming and the newcomers, and the sector mix is clearly broadening.

The fee mechanics behind the numbers

The 2025 statistics are hard to read without the fee schedule that produced them. The AAA's current structure, adopted in January 2024, looks like this:

Stage	AAA mass arbitration cost (current schedule)	Who pays
Initiation	Flat $11,250 for the whole campaign: $3,125 claimant side, $8,125 business side	Split
Per-case fees after initiation	roughly $125 to $325 per case, depending on volume	Mostly business
Final fees at merits end	$600 to $750 per case	Mostly business
Arbitrator compensation (consumer)	$300 per hour	Business
Process Arbitrator	appointed to decide administrative and threshold disputes before merits appointments	Business-funded

Two consequences follow. First, the cost of being named in a campaign is now front-loaded far less than before 2024, when a 1,000-demand filing could generate $1.775 million to $2.275 million in up-front fees. Second, the cost curve steepens sharply at the merits stage, which is why 96% of consumer settlements come before merits arbitrator appointment. The AAA also reports that consumers paid no AAA fees in about 17% of closed merits cases, and employees paid none in about 35%, reflecting fee waivers and business-pays provisions.

JAMS takes a different approach: its Mass Arbitration Procedures apply only where the parties expressly adopted them, with a single 75-claimant trigger and a lighter front end. The AAA and JAMS rulebook comparison sets out the differences. None of the JAMS caseload appears in the AAA's mass arbitration statistics.

Will mass arbitration filings increase in 2027?

Filings are expected to stay elevated through 2027, according to the November 2, 2026 Squire Patton Boggs analysis, which points to settlement economics that still favor claimants' counsel at the demand stage, privacy theories migrating to new statutes, expansion into new consumer sectors, and a pending Supreme Court ruling on the Video Privacy Protection Act. Whether 2027 demand counts actually rise will depend on whether any new mega-filing arrives; the campaign count is likely to stay near current levels.

The VPPA case is the specific catalyst. On January 26, 2026, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Salazar v. Paramount Global, No. 25-459, to decide who counts as a "consumer" under the statute. The plaintiff alleges that Paramount's Meta Pixel on 247Sports.com shared his Facebook ID and video-viewing history with Meta; the lower courts held he was not a statutory consumer because he subscribed only to a newsletter, not to audiovisual goods or services. A broad reading of "consumer" would expand the pool of potential claimants against any company that offers video content and runs tracking technology, and because the VPPA carries liquidated damages, it is the kind of statute that makes individual arbitration demands economically viable at scale. A decision is expected during the Court's October 2026 Term.

Squire Patton Boggs also notes a change on the drafting side: the AAA is seeing more detailed clauses that set out specific mass arbitration procedures, pre-conditions to filing, and expanded authority for Process Arbitrators. That is the respondent bar's answer to the 2025 numbers: if campaigns cannot be prevented, control the sequence in which they are administered.

Several other forces cut in different directions:

• Upward: wiretap and website-tracking theories, sweepstakes-casino gambling-loss claims, data-breach campaigns against respondents whose arbitration clauses survive court challenges, and the steady growth of mass arbitration funding.
• Downward: state legislation narrowing private wiretap suits, such as California's SB 690, courts rejecting browsewrap terms (which pushes claims back into court rather than arbitration), and respondents moving administration to JAMS or New Era ADR.
• Ambiguous: the AAA's leadership transition and rule revisions, and the Supreme Court's continuing docket of Federal Arbitration Act cases, including the bankruptcy-court arbitration question it agreed to hear in Goldman Sachs v. Brown on November 6, 2026.

The limits of AAA mass arbitration statistics

Mass arbitration statistics from a single provider should be read with four caveats.

One provider only. The data excludes JAMS, New Era ADR, and other administrators. A respondent that moved its clause to another provider in 2024 or 2025 disappears from the AAA count even if it faces a larger campaign elsewhere.

Lumpiness. The AAA warns that single large campaigns create large swings. Year-over-year demand totals are more a measure of whether a mega-filing happened than of the underlying trend.

Different denominators. Some percentages are calculated on closed cases, some on merits cases, some on campaigns. The 2024 infographic's 59% consumer settlement rate and the 2025 72% figure measure slightly different populations. The scorecard above notes where comparisons are imperfect.

No dollar values. The AAA does not report settlement amounts, average per-claimant recoveries or total fees paid. The data shows how often campaigns settle, not for how much, which is the number both sides most want and the one that remains confidential.

What it means for drafters, respondents, claimants' counsel and funders

For drafters. The data suggests that the dispositive-motion route to ending a consumer campaign is close to closed, with merits dismissals under 1% in 2025. Clause design is therefore shifting to sequencing and pre-filing gates: notice and informal resolution periods, individualized claim forms, process arbitrator authority over deficiencies, and staged administration under a Mass Arbitration Protocol. The choice of provider is also a statistical choice: the AAA applies its mass rules by its own discretion once the 25-demand threshold is met, while JAMS applies its procedures only by contractual election.

For respondents. With 96% of consumer settlements arriving before merits arbitrator appointment, the window between initiation and merits appointment is where campaigns are resolved. Respondents that want to test claims have more leverage in that window, through process arbitrator challenges and vetting that drives withdrawals (now about 21% of consumer merits cases), than at the merits stage. The employment award rate of about 7% shows that some respondents are willing to try claims, but that remains the exception.

For claimants' counsel. The campaign count shows that the market is not contracting, and the near-disappearance of consumer merits dismissals is favorable. But rising withdrawals signal that weak claimant files are being culled, and the AAA's vetting tools mean that inventory quality now determines how much of a filed campaign survives to settlement. A campaign built on a large advertised pool with thin documentation is more exposed than it was in 2023.

For litigation funders. The settlement-before-merits pattern is what makes mass arbitration financeable: duration is short relative to court litigation, and the AAA's data indicates that resolution typically arrives before the most expensive phase. The absence of settlement-value data, however, means underwriting still depends on private deal information rather than provider statistics, and the sector shift toward retail and privacy claims puts more weight on the outcome of Salazar v. Paramount Global.

For policymakers. The numbers cut against both caricatures. Mass arbitration is neither collapsing nor exploding; it is a stable, institutionalized practice running at roughly 90 campaigns a year at one provider alone, with outcomes concentrated in early settlement. Proposals that treat it as a temporary fee-arbitrage problem, or as a fully adjudicative alternative to the class action, are both hard to square with the 2025 data.

FAQ

How many mass arbitrations did the AAA receive in 2025?

The AAA received 88 distinct mass arbitration campaigns in 2025, carrying just under 105,000 individual demands. Of those, 81 were consumer caseloads that produced 104,556 demands; employment and workplace campaigns produced about 269 demands.

Is mass arbitration declining?

Not by campaign count, which was essentially flat at 88 in 2025 against 92 in 2024. Individual demands fell by about 62%, but that decline is explained by the absence of a few very large filings, including one employment campaign of roughly 30,000 cases in 2024.

How often do mass arbitration cases settle?

In 2025, 72% of consumer mass arbitration merits cases closed by the AAA settled before an award, and 96% of those settlements came before a merits arbitrator was appointed. In employment mass arbitration, 70% of the 1,393 merits cases closed in 2025 settled.

How often does a mass arbitration end in an award?

Fewer than 1% of consumer mass arbitration merits cases closed in 2025 ended in an award, against about 14% in individual consumer arbitration. Employment mass arbitrations ended in an award about 7% of the time, up from about 2% in 2024.

Which industries face the most mass arbitrations?

Gaming and entertainment, with more than 42,000 new demands at the AAA in 2025, followed by retail with more than 32,000. In 2024, gaming and entertainment alone produced more than 100,000 filings.

Will mass arbitration filings increase in 2027?

Squire Patton Boggs expects filings to remain elevated through 2027, driven by privacy theories moving into new statutes, expansion into new consumer sectors, and the Supreme Court's pending decision in Salazar v. Paramount Global on who counts as a "consumer" under the Video Privacy Protection Act.