NJ Sports Betting Surged Past $4.5 Billion Handle with Big December

Is the NJ online sports betting market the template for the rest of the country?

Month after month, the NJ online sports betting market numbers have been jaw-dropping. The trend continued in December 2019 with the latest numbers from the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement. With many states like Colorado, Michigan and Illinois looking for the best online betting frame-work, NJ is providing a recipe to success.

December Sports Betting Revenue Report

Some numbers from the NJDGE:

In addition, the report from the NJDGE provided us with some revenue numbers for November.

A reported betting handle of $557.8M as seen above is healthy, but the attractive number is $29,424,884 in revenue from sports wagering in December 2019, which is up 41.4% from December 2018. This allows the state of New Jersey to make more money for the budget in terms of taxes. November’s numbers were higher, but that is no surprise with the plethora of sports offerings in November. Combine that with holiday spending, the end of the NFL season, and college football on exam break, the fact that December was still close to November is still great news for New Jersey.

2019 Sports Betting Totals

For the year 2019, there was a massive $4.58B in betting handle and revenue just shy of $300M ($299,398,305), which results in $36M worth of taxes to the state budget. For the record, 2018 brought home $94M in revenue, which means 2019 more than tripled the revenue, which in turn becomes more than triple the money in taxes for the state of New Jersey. Remarkable numbers for the state, and plenty to look forward to as this is just the beginning.

The report also shows just which sports were bet on most. Here is a look at how each sport earned in terms of betting handle in 2019:

Football is king for individual sports, but it is interesting to note that basketball is right there.

One other note from the report: Sports betting has helped save a few casinos in Atlantic City, and they reported $3.3B in winnings in 2019 from gamblers, a huge jump from 2018.

Online Betting Sets Record

This is insane. Remember this chart from earlier?

The percentages of sports betting in New Jersey that takes place online rather than in-person is staggering. In December 2019, mobile betting had nearly $489M of the total $557M in betting handle. That comes to 87.6% of the bets being placed on mobile devices in New Jersey. For any other state that does not offer sports betting on mobile devices for bettors, this should be a clear motivation. For every dollar that is wagered, $0.876 comes from mobile betting.

The Meadowlands License Tops the Leaderboard Again

FanDuel Sportsbook and PointsBet (Meadowlands) licenses combined to bring home $14.51M in revenue in December. Most of the Meadowlands’ license comes from FanDuel Sportsbook, of course. Resorts Digital (DraftKings Sportsbook, mostly) brought home $9.33M in revenue in December. It is safe to say that over $22M of the state of New Jersey’s $29.4M in revenue came from the two sports betting behemoths in DraftKings and FanDuel.

2020 will be challenge for other sportsbook operators to complete with DraftKings and FanDuel in this space, but it’s only just the beginning of sports betting in the state of New Jersey.