Digital Wager Wire highlights the most important events impacting the domestic and international sports betting and gaming industry each week throughout the year.
Study Shows Nevada Boasts Biggest Sports Bettors
Although Nevada doesn’t even crack the top five in overall sports betting handles, the Silver State does reign supreme in per capita average sports betting wagers. At least, that is the finding of a study commissioned by France-based Gamdom Casino, which reveals Nevadans spend an average of $1815 per person per year on sports bets.
“Since its inception, sports betting has been a rapidly growing business in the states in which it’s legal,” Felix Romer, founder of Gamdom, said in an emailed statement. “This data demonstrates just that, and it’s certainly interesting to see which among those states are embracing it the most. The figures are generally quite astounding in their scale. The amount of money wagered in the top few states is certainly a shocking statistic when compared to the average American state where sports betting is legal,” added Romer.
The top five per capita sports betting states are as follows:
- Nevada – $1815 per person per annum
- New Jersey – $1,398 per person per annum
- New York – $1,087 per person per annum
- Massachusetts – $1,041 per person per annum
- Arizona – $929 per person per annum
However, when the category shifts to total year-end handles, the projections are as follows (without the benefit of December’s report, as this study was released before those numbers were available).
- New York – $21.3 Billion
- New Jersey – $13 Billion
- Illinois – $11 Billion
- Massachusetts – $7.3 Billion
- Arizona – $6.9 Billion
Nevada’s projected 2024 sports betting handle is $5.8 billion while South Dakotans spent the least on sports betting in the states where it is legal, with a total handle of just $7 million and a per capita spend of $7.63 per person.
Could iGaming Be Coming to Louisiana?
Louisiana legislators are grappling with a projected budget deficit of $500 million and are looking for alternative revenue streams to support it without taxing its citizens. Thus, online casino gambling has been a recent topic of conversation since the Pelican State launched retail sports betting on October 31, 2021, followed by mobile sports betting going live in January 2022.
That added revenue has helped alleviate some, but not all, of the state’s fiscal crunch, and studies show iGaming revenues tower above sports betting’s revenues. In June, the state legislature approved Senator Kirk Talbot’s Senate Resolution 149, which ordered a comprehensive study on how online gambling would impact the state, and whose findings are due on March 1, 2025.
In anticipation of that report, Louisiana’s Senate Judiciary B and Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committees convened earlier in December to discuss the pros and cons of online casino gambling. This turn of events could signal the arrival of iGaming legislation at some point this year depending on the results of the study.
The American Gaming Association contends that Louisianans spent $4.6 billion at offshore betting sites, but should legalization occur, much of that money would likely be kept in the state with licensed iGaming platforms. In this scenario, revenues derived from those sites would bolster the state’s tax coffers and alleviate the deficit issue.
