Since the acceleration of the mass arbitration phenomenon in 2019, the American Arbitration Association (AAA) has received hundreds of mass arbitration filings, with close to 250 unique mass arbitrations since 2023 alone. Mass arbitrations range in size from at least 25 individual cases to tens of thousands, with one potential mass arbitration in the hundreds of thousands of individual cases. Volatility has defined the marketplace, with data fluctuating wildly year-to-year as large mass arbitrations create equally large shifts in numbers.
Mass arbitration, as the AAA defines that term, is where 25 or more similar demands for arbitration are filed on behalf of (usually) a group of individuals against a common entity, where representation of the parties is consistent or coordinated on each side. Typically, this occurs where a law firm simultaneously files similar demands for arbitration against a common business that has a standardized arbitration agreement applying to all individual consumers. In non-consumer, non employment/workplace cases, the threshold for a mass arbitration under the AAA’s definition is 100 cases. This is an emerging sector of the mass arbitration industry and one we could see large mass arbitrations from in the near future.
Under the AAA’s Mass Arbitration Supplementary Rules, which supplement an underlying rule set such as the Consumer or Employment/Workplace Arbitration Rules, there are two phases to a mass arbitration proceeding. After the cases are filed and the parties have paid their flat, initial administrative fees, the AAA appoints a Process Arbitrator to decide any disputed, non-merits issues. The Process Arbitrator’s authority is outlined in the Supplementary Rules, but typical examples of issues submitted to the Process Arbitrator are whether the claimants met any contractual pre-conditions to filing, which arbitration agreement applies, and whether the claimants met the relevant filing requirements. Parties may, and often do, agree to submit other issues to the Process Arbitrator for a decision, which can significantly streamline the individual merits arbitration phase.
Once the Process Arbitrator has decided disputed issues the parties submitted, the cases move to individual merits arbitration. In this phase, the AAA appoints merits arbitrators to hear and decide each individual case, with an award issued in each individual’s case (unless otherwise specified by the contract). Global mediation is also available throughout the process.
In 2024, the AAA released its first data on mass arbitrations. This article will explore data for 2025, highlighting key comparisons between the two datasets and examining the differences.
Just the numbers
Consumer 2025 mass arbitration data at a glance
- Total new consumer demands submitted: 104,556
- Top 5 industries:
- Entertainment/Gaming: 42,299
- Retail: 32,203
- Financial Services: 8,584
- Hospitality/Travel: 8,527
- Telecommunications: 5,978
- Total number of unique mass arbitration caseloads submitted: 81
- Number of cases proceeding to merits arbitration (includes cases from 2025 and previous years): 3,665 (2,677 in financial services)
- Top locales for merits cases:
- California: 3,345
- Utah: 103
- Missouri: 29
- Settled:
- Overall 72% settlement rate of 6,360 merits cases closed in 2025
- 96% of settled cases did so prior to merits arbitrator appointment
- Consumers paid $0 in 17% of closed merits cases, and their fees are otherwise capped to maintain the accessibility of the process When filing, the consumers pay a flat fee of $3,125 regardless of how many cases are filed. Once cases proceed to merits arbitration, consumers pay a tiered filing fee of $125 per case that decreases to $75 per case after the first 500 cases. The initial flat fee of $3,125 is credited toward these fees. Consumers also pay a fee of $50 or $75 when the arbitrator is appointed to the individual merits case. The amount of the fee depends on the method of selecting the arbitrator. Consumers who qualify for a fee waiver pay $0 per case. Total fees per consumer who do not qualify for a waiver are not more than $200 per case.
Employment 2025 mass arbitration data at a glance
- Total new employment demands submitted: 269
- Top Industries:
- Transportation: 78
- Construction: 51
- Energy: 41
- Automotive: 38
- Consulting: 35
- Total number of unique mass arbitration caseloads submitted: 7
- Number of cases proceeding to merits arbitration (includes cases from 2025 and previous years): 33,008 (of which over 32,000were in the transportation sector)
- Top locales:
- California: 17,217
- Illinois: 13,546
- Massachusetts: 1,846
- Settled:
- Overall: 70% settlement rate of 1,393 merits cases closed in 2025
- 77% of those settled prior to merits arbitrator appointment
- $542,875 in fees waived for employees
- Employees paid $0 in 35% of closed merits cases and their fees are otherwise capped to maintain the accessibility of the process. When filing, the individuals pay a flat fee of $3,125 regardless of how many cases are filed. Once cases proceed to merits arbitration, individuals pay a tiered filing fee of $125 per case that decreases to $75 per case after the first 500 cases. The initial flat fee of $3,125 is credited toward these fees. Individuals also pay a fee of $150 when the arbitrator is appointed to the individual merits case. Individuals who qualify for a fee waiver pay $0 per case. Total fees per individual who do not qualify for a waiver are not more than $350 per case.
Comparing 2024 vs. 2025
Total numbers
The biggest change between 2024 and 2025 numbers is the total number of individual demands filed as part of a mass arbitration. The AAA received approximately 280,000 individual filings in 2024 versus just under 105,000 in 2025. This represents a decrease of more than 142,000 demands in consumer and about 33,000 demands in employment/workplace. This decrease in employment/workplace demands is nearly entirely attributable to one large mass arbitration of about 30,000 cases filed in 2024, with no similar counterpart in 2025. Notably, the total number of unique mass arbitrations, consumer and employment combined, remained about the same, with a total of 88 in 2025 compared to 92 in 2024.
The AAA also saw a swing in the number of cases proceeding to merits arbitration. These are cases where both sides met their filing requirements after the Process Arbitrator stage. While the AAA had over 24,000 consumer mass arbitration merits cases proceed in 2024, only 3,665 cases proceeded to the merits phase in 2025.
For employment/workplace mass arbitrations, the large 2024 employment/workplace mass arbitration of over 30,000 cases went forward to the merits phase in 2025, resulting in an increase of over 32,000 employment/workplace claims moving to the merits phase in 2025 as compared to the less-than 500 cases proceeding to the merits stage in 2024.
Industries
Gaming/Entertainment was still the largest industry for new mass arbitration demands in 2025, with over 42,000 new demands; however, there were about 59,000 more consumer Gaming/Entertainment demands in 2024 than in 2025. Retail was not a top sector in 2024 but had over 32,000 new demands submitted in 2025. Hospitality/Travel was also not a top industry in 2024, but saw over 8,500 new consumer demands in 2025. Financial services and Telecommunications were, in both 2025 and 2024, among the top industries with consumer mass arbitration filings, but with reduced demand numbers (about 13,000 fewer demands in Financial Services and almost 32,000 in Telecommunications in 2025). Technology, which had over 50,000 demands in 2024 across both employment and consumer caseloads, did not make the 2025 list for either claim type.
Locale
California was the top locale state for both consumer and employment merits caseloads in 2025. California has been the top locale state for individual consumer and employment filings with AAA for the past several years.
Case Disposition
For cases that went to the merits phase (having completed the Process Arbitrator phase), settlement rates remained high. The numbers show an increase in consumer settlements from 59% in 2024 to 72% of cases in the merits phase and closed in 2025, but a decrease in settlements from 77% in 2024 to 70% of closed employment merits cases in 2025. Ninety-six percent of consumer cases and 77% of employment cases that settled in 2025 did so prior to merits arbitrator appointment. This could suggest a few interpretations:
- The decisions of the Process Arbitrator are helping the parties reach settlement prior to decisions on the merits.
- Some cases are being decided on the merits before all cases in the mass arbitration proceed to arbitrator selection, which is helping parties settle before the full caseload is heard.
- Parties do not want to incur the cost of appointing merits arbitrators and are settling based on those costs.
Consumer cases saw a decrease from about 30% to <1% in dismissals on the merits from 2024 to 2025, suggesting that one large consumer mass arbitration could have skewed these numbers for 2024. The low 2025 dismissal rate is consistent with the dismissal rate for individual, non-mass arbitration consumer cases, which are nearly all decided after a hearing (either live or on the documents) rather than on a motion to dismiss.
Awards on the merits are still relatively infrequent in consumer mass arbitrations. Less than 1% of consumer cases reaching the merits phase were decided by award, based on cases closed in 2025. In individual (non-mass) arbitration cases, consumer cases are decided by award in about 14% of cases. For employment/workplace mass arbitration cases, the rate of award increased from about 2% in 2024 to about 7% in 2025. This compares to 9% for individual employment/workplace cases in 2025.
While both consumer and employment mass arbitrations continue to settle at high rates prior to award, the data suggests meaningful differences in how these cases progress once they reach the merits phase. This divergence likely reflects structural differences between the two types of disputes. Consumer mass arbitrations often involve very large claimant pools and relatively low individual claim values, creating strong incentives for early, global settlements, during or after the Process Arbitrator phase, before incurring the costs of full merits proceedings. In contrast, employment/workplace mass arbitrations tend to involve smaller groups of claimants with higher per-claim stakes, which may make parties more willing to arbitrate through to a decision. These dynamics suggest that employment/workplace mass arbitrations more closely resemble traditional non-mass arbitration, with a greater proportion of cases proceeding to final award.
Rates of withdrawal fluctuated in 2025 for consumer mass arbitration cases reaching the merits phases, but not for employment/workplace. About 21% of consumer merits cases were withdrawn in 2025, compared to 10% in 2024, and about 14% of employment/workplace merits cases were withdrawn in both 2025 and 2024.
The Big Picture
The number of cases moving to the merits phase increased in 2025 but shifted almost entirely to employment/workplace mass arbitration cases, while consumer cases made up nearly all merits cases in 2024. This is indicative of the unpredictable nature of mass arbitrations, where even one large mass arbitration can shift numbers substantially in one direction. It could also suggest that fewer mass arbitration cases are being filed with the AAA, being either settled beforehand or proceeding in a different forum.
Overall, the number of unique mass arbitrations remained steady although the number of demands that make up each mass arbitration decreased substantially in 2025, and the industries from which these claims arose also shifted, reflecting the wide variety of claims that can be brought in mass arbitrations.
The Future of Mass Arbitrations
Many commenters on the mass arbitration industry predict a fork in the road for 2026. Some businesses may amend their clauses to allow class actions, either in arbitration or in court, while other businesses may continue to use arbitration, including mass arbitrations, and decide to try cases to award.
For drafters who choose arbitration, the AAA is seeing more detailed clauses laying out specific mass arbitration procedures, pre-conditions to filing, and more specified and expanded authority for Process Arbitrators (or carving out certain issues for courts to decide). These clauses are reviewed as part of the AAA’s Consumer Clause Registry submission process and must comply with the AAA’s Consumer Due Process Protocol.
Conclusion
Despite the hundreds of thousands of individual demands filed, mass arbitration is still a young field ripe for development. The 2025 data reinforces a central theme: outcomes in this space are driven less by steady trends and more by structural dynamics and the outsized influence of any one large mass arbitration filing. The sharp decline in new filings, paired with a significant shift in where cases are progressing on the merits, underscores how a small number of large matters can reshape the landscape from year to year.
At the same time, core features of mass arbitration remain consistent—high settlement rates, early resolution prior to merits arbitrator appointment, and meaningful differences between consumer and employment/workplace disputes.
What is becoming clearer is that mass arbitration is not a single, uniform process. Consumer and employment/workplace cases behave differently, industries are shifting, and parties are adapting their strategies in response to both cost pressures and procedural developments. Mass arbitration is also evolving into the commercial B2B space, bringing more complexity and nuance to the practice.
Looking ahead, the challenge for all stakeholders will be to balance efficiency, fairness, and enforceability against a developing and complex landscape.