It is no surprise that sports betting in Massachusetts, a hotbed of professional sports, has caught on like wildfire and the numbers from August 2024 prove that its popularity is only growing with the sports fanatics in the Boston area.
Rising Handles & Revenues
The August handle in the Bay State was encouraging as it showed $447.3 million in monthly accepted wagers, an 8.6% increase over July’s $411.8 million. But that was to be expected as July is routinely the slowest month on the North American sports betting calendar. There are no other professional team sports leagues in the heat of the summer, except Major League Baseball, which puts a damper on sports betting.
However, August welcomes the beginning of the early college football regular season and the NFL exhibition slate, which whets the appetites of those who have been longing for the biggest betting sport since the Super Bowl closed the curtain on the 2023 season in February. Therefore, comparing August’s handle to July’s is a predictable exercise that will almost always show the former with higher betting volume.
However, year-over-year numbers are the most important comparison to get the pulse of a particular market. In this case, we see that Massachusetts sports bettors were much more active this August than last. As a basis of comparison, we note the following:
- August 2024 handle of $447.3 million is up 43.1% from August 2023’s $307.2 million
- August 2024 revenue of $33.3 million is up 46.1% from August 2023’s $22.6 million
- August 2024 taxes collected of $6.6 million is up 46.1% from August 2023’s $4.5 million
It should be noted that the year-over-year growth can be attributed solely to mobile sports betting as the retail shops showed $7,627,864, as its August 2024 handle was down $50,000 or 0.6% compared to August 2023.
Bay State Loves DraftKings
In many states we see FanDuel claiming the top spot with DraftKings coming in a familiar second place. However, in the Boston-based bookmaker’s home state, DraftKings rules with an iron fist as August’s numbers bear that out once again. DraftKings generated a $229.4 million handle which equaled a whopping 52.2% share of the Bay State market and delivered $16.6 million in revenues.
It was a long way to second place as FanDuel saw $118.2 million in accepted wagers which produced $10.7 million in adjusted gross revenues.
The hold, or win rate, is the ultimate arbiter in sportsbooks’ revenues. Despite a handle that may be higher than the previous month, if the sportsbooks’ win rate is lower, so too could be the revenue depending on the disparity in win rates.
The other five online sportsbooks showed the following handles and revenues while comparing those to the previous month. As we can see below, all the sportsbooks but Bally’s showed lower revenues than in July 2024 despite all having higher handles.
- BetMGM: $31.1 million handle (+13% from $21.2 million); $2.3 million revenue (-17.6% from $2.8 million)
- Fanatics: $25.9 million handle (+23.4% from $21 million); $1.6 million revenue (-30.5% from $2.2 million)
- ESPN Bet: $16.7 million handle (-12.5% from $19.1 million); $1.3 million revenue (-11% from $1.5 million)
- Caesars: $16 million handle (+20.9% from 13.2 million); $674K revenue (-26.3% from $915K)
- Bally Bet: $2.4 million handle (+0.7% from $2.4 million); $222K revenue (+99.2% from $112K)
