New Jersey Sports Betting: $16.4 Million Booked in First 17 Days
New Jersey casinos and race tracks booked $16.4 million in wagers over the first 17 days of legal sports betting in the Garden State. It’s a strong start for NJ sports betting considering Monmouth Park and Borgata began taking wagers on June 14th while the Ocean Resort sportsbook opened for business on June 28th.
Figures released by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (NJDGE) yesterday show that despite only three sportsbooks being ready to go last month, they took in a total of $16.4 million in wagers, collected gross revenue of nearly $3.5 million and generated nearly $294,000 in tax revenue for the state.
For comparison’s sake, Delaware took in $7 million in wagers over its first fiscal month of legal sports betting. That too was a shorter time frame with sports betting getting underway on June 5th and the fiscal month ending June 24th for a total of 20 days’ worth of action. Delaware’s three race tracks over that time earned revenue of just over $1 million.
Delaware got a head start on New Jersey in offering sports betting, but faces a lower ceiling with a population of just 962,000 compared to New Jersey’s 9 million people plus easy access for New Yorkers. Still, $7 million in revenue is a very strong start for Delaware considering those population numbers.
How Each New Jersey Sportsbook Did in June
Back in New Jersey, Monmouth Park made out the best for the month with $2,279,166 in gross revenue (wagers minus payouts). It was at Monmouth Park that Governor Phil Murphy placed New Jersey’s first ever legal sports wager at the grand opening of the track’s sportsbook.
The Borgata finished in second place with gross revenue of $986,831. Ocean Resort, which was only open for the last three days of June, still managed to collect gross revenue of $192,671 from sports betting.
Meadowlands Racetrack is set to commence sports betting this weekend and other New Jersey casinos are sure to follow suit in coming weeks and months. This first half-month of sports betting generated significant action, but things are only getting started in New Jersey.
Online sports betting rules are now in effect as well and that should generate serious revenue all on its own. Regulations approved by Governor Murphy on June 11th stipulated that NJ betting sites may go live 30 days after taking effect, which means Wednesday was the first possible date for that to happen.
No online sportsbooks have gone live in New Jersey yet, but the way is clear as far as state law goes. Now, it’s just a matter of the various casinos and race tracks in New Jersey getting their technical systems up to speed and receiving authorization from the NJDGE to go live.
How New Jersey Sports Bettors Stack Up Against the Nevada Veterans
The NJDGE numbers released yesterday conveniently break down sports betting handle by type of wager as well, showing us how much they took on events that have been completed separately from money still in action on longer-term futures wagers. Thus, we’ve been given the first hold figures from New Jersey.
New Jersey bettors wagered $15.4 million in aggregate on completed events and were paid back about $14.2 million to give the sportsbooks about $1.2 million in gross revenue on those events. This means bettors in New Jersey lost about 7.8% of total dollars bet. In other words, New Jersey sportsbooks achieved a hold of 7.8%.
Taken as a whole, gamblers in Nevada tend to lose about 5-6% of total money wagered in any given year at the sportsbooks. Nevadans wagered $4.8 billion at local sportsbooks last year and lost about $248.7 million to give the sportsbooks a 5.1% hold.
New Jersey sports bettors have some room for improvement compared to Nevadans, but overall didn’t do too poorly considering New Jersey has had legal sports betting for less than a month as of today.
Plus, there’s the fact we’re comparing wildly different sample sizes here. Still, it was interesting to see New Jersey sports bettors not too far off from what’s typical in the much more established Nevada market. It will be even more interesting to see those New Jersey hold percentages after a full year of sports betting.
Most Popular Types of Bets to Date
94% of total New Jersey betting handle was placed on short-term events that were settled before the end of the month (completed events) and 6% was placed on longer-term futures in June.
Not surprisingly, MLB and soccer were the two most popular sports to bet on last month in New Jersey. About $10.1 million went to completed MLB events and $2.2 million to completed soccer events. Together, MLB and soccer accounted for 80% of the completed events betting action in June.
Futures betting was spread out across three major sports last month. Soccer attracted about $500,000 in futures wagers, NFL attracted about $281,000 and MLB attracted about $131,000.
Mike Murphy is the founder of BettingUSA.com and has over 10 years of experience in the legal gambling industry. A regular attendee of industry trade shows and conferences, Mike is a strong proponent in the idea of a well regulated online betting industry.
