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New US Sports Betting Market Now Exceeds $150B

Written by Jennifer Newell
Last updated on
Jennifer Newell

Americans love their sports and the ability to bet on those sports.

When the United States Supreme Court made its now-famous ruling in May 2018, Americans celebrated. And state legislators stepped up to provide those sports wagering opportunities in big numbers. That SCOTUS ruling in Murphy v National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) overturned the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), declaring the law that limited sports betting to Nevada and a few other select locations unconstitutional. New Jersey won the right to legalize sports betting, and it did the same for every state in America.

Each state had to legalize sports betting within its borders and create a framework for licensing and regulating the market. To date, Washington DC and 36 states have done just that. Five of those states have yet to launch their sports betting sites, but the other 31 have live betting options.

Revenue from the entirety of the US sports betting market has grown consistently.

Steady Progression

Just after the SCOTUS decision in May 2018, there were three states with commercial wagering on sports. Those brought in $8,419,281 in gross revenue from $309,961,639 in handle. By the end of 2018, December showed how much the market had grown. With seven states offering sports wagering, gross revenue had jumped to $82,636,901 from $992,233,350 in handle (amount of money wagered).

One year after that, there were 13 states with sports betting options. The December 2019 revenue statistics showed $113,677,366 in gross revenue from more than $1.87M in handle.

Let’s look at the progression of revenue, courtesy of statistics from Sports Handle.

-2018:  7 states = $334,579,931 gross revenue from $4,618,927,053 handle

-2019:  13 states = $920,092,650 gross revenue (up 175%) from $13,138,741,263 handle

-2020:  19 states = $1,547,493,477 gross revenue (up 68.2%) from $21,545,027,984 handle

-2021:  26 states = $4,343,924,377 gross revenue (up 180.1%) from $57,754,307,272 handle

Though no new states have launched commercial sports betting in 2022, the first eight months of the year already put gross revenue past $3.8B. This will easily push past the 2021 total before the year is over and show another year of growth.

Wagering Milestone

With the monthly handle numbers totaled since the PASPA ruling by the US Supreme Court through August 2022, that total of $151,651,565,277 hit a new milestone. In just a few years, Americans in 26 states have wagered more than $151B.

From that $151B, states have counted $11B in gross revenue. And for the states’ coffers, they have collected $1,771,210,144 in taxes.

Football Season in Effect

Speaking of records, it appears that this season of betting on the National Football League (NFL) will set another high bar.

According to the American Gaming Association (AGA), research showed that 46.6M adults (18%) planned to bet on this NFL season. That is an increase of 3% from the previous season.

Of those 46.6M adults, there will be approximately 23M betting online, which is an increase of 18%. And approximately 6M people will place their bets at live sportsbooks this year, up 2% from last season.

In addition, more people will bet through state-licensed sportsbooks – in person and online – than through offshore sportsbooks and bookies as in the past. In fact, only 13% of bettors surveyed by the AGA will use a bookie rather than a state-licensed entity. That is down 2% from last year and 4% in the past two years.

 

 

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