New York moves closer to first $2 B monthly sports wagering handle

The five weekly reports that include January started with the week of Dec. 26-Jan. 1, with New Year’s Day falling on Week 17 of the NFL season. The commission does not break down wagering on a daily basis in its reports, leaving it uncertain how much of the $410.8 million wagered that week was placed on events to kick off 2023. 

The chances of reaching $2 billion took a hit with the Buffalo Bills being eliminated in the divisional round of the playoffs by the Cincinnati Bengals, reducing local interest in wagering on the AFC Championship Game.

The four full weeks of exclusively January action generated $1.62 billion handle. That makes it all but certain when adding New Year’s Day plus Jan. 30-31 wagering that the month will better New York‘s record handle of $1.67 billion established during the mobile launch in January 2022. Retail wagering at the state’s four brick-and-mortar sportsbooks will not provide a large boost — the $16.5 million handle for January 2022 was 21% lower than in 2021, when mobile wagering was not available.

After a record week of operator revenue, bettors rebounded from Jan. 23-29 to claw back some winnings as the nine mobile books combined for $27.3 million in adjusted revenue — less than half the $57.5 million for the week ending Jan. 22. Operator hold for the week ending Jan. 29 was 7.9%, nearly five full percentage points lower than the previous seven days of wagering.

Another national record up for grabs is New York’s monthly revenue standard of $148.2 million established in November. The four weeks of reports spanning Jan. 2-29 showed $142.7 million in revenue, leaving operators $7.3 million shy of the first $150 million monthly revenue haul post-PASPA.

WynnBET’s struggles versus the public continue

On the high end of the operator revenue spectrum is FanDuel, which accounted for nearly half of the overall winnings last week with close to $13.5 million on a hold of 9.2% from $146.8 million handle. Weekly eight-figure totals are commonplace for the mobile titan — the $4 million in winnings from Dec. 12-18 was its only week in the last 22 below $10 million.

On the other end is WynnBET, which has failed to post a win rate above the 7% industry standard for 13 weeks running. Its handle consistently ranks seventh among the nine operators, and the low holds have led to some soft weekly revenue totals. The book finished with just under $3,000 for the week ending Jan. 29, its win rate barely above 0.1% on more than $2.2 million in accepted wagers.

WynnBET has also posted three weekly losses over the last 13 weeks. It has a 2.2% hold in that span, claiming less than $700,000 in winnings from $31.2 million in handle.

DraftKings was a comfortable No. 2 to FanDuel in both handle and revenue for the week, extending its run of nine-figure handles to 18 with $108.7 million in bets accepted. The $6.7 million in revenue represented a drop of 67%, however, from its record $20.2 million in the previous week. The Massachusetts-based book will also likely have its first month with $600 million handle in the Empire State.

Caesars Sportsbook and BetMGM continue to hold down the third and fourth spots, respectively, combining for $67.2 million in handle and more than $6.4 million in revenue. Caesars finished less than $30,000 shy of $4 million revenue, while BetMGM had its first double-digit hold in seven weeks at 10.2% to claim $2.5 million in winnings.

Though statewide mobile handle dipped 23.5% from the $450.7 million reported for the week ending Jan. 22, BetRivers bucked the trend. It was one of two operators to post a week-over-week handle increase, setting its all-time weekly record at close to $11.7 million. Its revenue plunged almost 70% to less than $350,000, however, as the house win rate shrank nearly 7.5 percentage points to just under 3%.

Bally Bet‘s handle increase for the week was slightly more than $9,000 to just over $246,000.

By Chris Altruda