Sports betting operators in Nevada handled $811 million in wagers for the month of September, nearly doubling August’s output with the welcome arrival of football season. Those bets yielded $62.3 million in gross revenue for operators and $4.21 million in taxes for the state.
Nevada’s volume for 2023 to date now sits at $5.67 billion, slightly down from last year’s total over the same span but moving in a positive direction. Sportsbooks have won $311 million so far this year, conversely a few points ahead of 2022’s pace with margins that have slightly widened.
The September report foreshadows another big season of college and NFL betting, both in Nevada and across the rest of the country.
Football betting season arrives
The sports calendar for September revolves around football, and football betting is still the main attraction in Nevada. Nearly 64% of the month’s tickets ($510 million) were football tickets, yielding 62% of the total revenue.
Action at baseball sportsbooks, meanwhile, starts to slow down as the playoffs begin, but MLB betting was still responsible for `close to a quarter of the state’s total handle and revenue for the month.
Basketball and hockey are both essentially rounding errors on the betting report for September, but both will begin ramping up over the next few months.
Nevada sports betting trends
Although Nevada seems to have cooled off a bit from its record-setting 2022, most of the trouble was frontloaded in January and February. The spring and summer months were essentially flat in annual comparisons, and the local market seems to be heating up again as the weather cools back down.
September volume was up 7% year over year, building on a similar 6% increase in August. These two course corrections snapped a string of 12 consecutive months of decline to put Nevada back on track to match its 2022 performance this year.
Although revenue took a small step backward for September, the $62+ million was still strong enough to represent a top-three month in Nevada history. Only November 2021 and September 2022 produced a bigger haul for operators.
State regulators do not report data by brand, but a recent product update from Caesars (and William Hill by extension in Nevada) might factor into the turnaround. The percentage of Nevada sports betting volume that originates online continues to increase over time, sitting near 66% in the most recent report.
Fall boost for US sports betting
Nevada’s slow approach into the football season is not indicative of the national picture. Many other markets posted record reports for September that reflect substantial year-over-year gains despite the headwind of expansion from some neighbors.
New York, for example, was up 40% from 2022 and seems to be flirting with a $2 billion month in October. New Jersey is even hotter, growing a full 50% from this time last year to move back into second place on the overall leaderboard.
Maturer markets like Pennsylvania and Michigan, which had seemingly crested, found a sudden burst of energy in the form of double-digit handle growth in September.
Total volume for the month is up 34% from 2022 across same-state reporting, with Massachusetts and Ohio padding the numbers in their first September with legal sports betting.
The bigger picture is impressive for Nevada amid ongoing expansion of US sports betting too. The market grew nearly 60% since 2019 and tracking toward another record-setting year.