Public, give yourself a hand: you cut into Nevada sports betting revenue in October just as you did elsewhere.
A strong month for football bettors slashed gridiron win by about $18 million last month. That led to Nevada’s overall hold coming down by nearly half, from a state-record $56 million to $29 million. Handle fell slightly from September, down from a best-ever $571 million to $528 million.
Books will not complain about more than a half-billion dollars in handle, of course. Even though handle dropped a bit from last month, the drop scores as the second-best October on record for Nevada.
Over time, that amount of wagers will lead to much better win than $29 million. But in a month when the public side comes in on every game in an NFL Sunday, bettors earned a victory lap.
Nevada sports betting not alone
Las Vegas books hardly bore the brunt of the bad month by themselves. Take a look around the country at other states with legal sports betting and you find similar stories:
New Jersey: handle rose by 40 percent to $260 million but revenue fell by half to $11.7 million. The New Jersey sports betting market continued to mature appreciably while football wiped out revenue gains.
Mississippi: books actually lost money ($600,000) on football, with more than two-thirds of bets placed on pigskin action. Given the nature of the South, Mississippi sports betting always will find itself more vulnerable to a bad month of football.
Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, Rhode Island, New Mexico … they too will be subject to the fluctuations of football, forever the king of sports betting.
Breaking down Nevada’s numbers in October
The state’s overall hold of 5.59 percent for October falls in line with the historical average for Nevada sports betting. The confluence of America’s four major sports usually leads to October ranking among the best sports betting revenue months.
- Bettors put up more than $74 million on the baseball playoffs. The results mostly came in as chalk through the World Series and books posted a strong win of $8.2 million (11 percent.)
- The start of the NBA led to more than $51.6 million in wagers on basketball in October. In a slightly unpredictable opening month in the association, books held more than $3.7 million (7.23 percent.)
- As always, parlays helped balance the ledger for Nevada books last month. Books held more than a quarter of the money wagered on the cards, winning $2.7 million on $10.7 million in action.
- Other sports including the NHL, auto racing, golf and tennis accounting for $51 million in handle. Casinos posted a win of $3.6 million, or more than 7 percent.
