New Jersey bettered Nevada in legal sports betting revenue for the first time in January.
After just eight months in the industry, the Garden State’s 13 sportsbooks won $18.8 million from its punters. This against the $14.6 million garnered by Nevada, which unlike New Jersey, has been offering legal sports betting for decades.
New Jersey and most other US states had been prohibited from sports betting since the early 1990s by the PASPA law. It was only in June last year, after the Supreme Court ruled PASPA unconstitutional, that sports betting began in NJ.
The latest revenue figures are official. They were made available by the Nevada Gaming Control Board and the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.
Nevada sportsbooks took a monthly handle in January of $497 million in wagers. New Jersey punters, meanwhile, spent $385. NJ’s revenue prevailed, however, because Nevada’s sportsbooks had a hold rate of 7.8 percent as against a national average of 4.8.
DraftKings, FanDuel took most of NJ’s handle
Between them, duel sportsbook and sports fantasy giants DraftKings ($6.8 million) and FanDuel ($5.85) were the New Jersey handle front-runners. Both take the vast bulk of their bets online. So too do most of the State’s other sportsbooks including other early startups like Play SugarHouse and BetStars.
January has traditionally been one of Nevada’s slower months, but recent trends indicate there is a downturn in overall gaming in the state. Its casinos in January had a 3-percent drop in winnings as opposed to the same month last year. They made $984 million compared to the $1.015 billion in 2018.
This was not the case in New Jersey. Nor does it seem to have been in the seven other states where sports-betting is now legal. The expansion of sportsbooks in the US seems to be putting one-time lone betting state Nevada under increasing pressure.
For now, Las Vegas remains king of the US betting industry, but NJ is closing fast – and there is more. Delaware, Mississippi, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island are getting up steam and 22 other states are considering sportsbooks.
