Illinois Mobile Sports Betting Market Outperforms Jersey by $8M in August

• Illinois Reports August Sports Betting Revenue, Tops Prior Aug. by 41%, NJ by $8M
• Illinois Sportsbooks Have Generated Over $1B in Gaming Revenue Since March 2020
• Since 2018, Total U.S. Sports Betting Handle is $157B, Total Revenue is $11.6B

Illinois Reports August Sports Betting Revenue, Tops Prior Aug. by 41%, NJ by $8M

When it comes to gambling in the U.S., the first two cities that used to come to mind were Las Vegas and Atlantic City, but now that every state is allowed to legalize, regulate, and tax its own sports betting market, other areas of the country are developing a solid rep with oddsmakers.

Take Illinois for example – that state’s August numbers were just released, and that market generated gross gaming revenue of almost $565 million which exceeded what New Jersey reported for the same month by $8 million, surprising competition from the Prairie State.

New York was still number one in August with more than $877 million in gross revenue for that same time period, but the fact that the Illinois gaming market is playing with the big boys seems to be a clear indication that legal sports betting can be lucrative for every state.

Of course, those numbers represent gross revenue, but the more important number to state residents is the amount of tax revenue that the market generated, and in 2022 through August, the state of Illinois saw almost $70 million in tax revenue, money that can be reinvested in the state.

The Land of Lincoln has been benefitting from this new income stream since March 2020.

Illinois Sportsbooks Have Generated Over $1B in Gaming Revenue Since March 2020

Up until May 2018, the only way for sports gamblers to place bets on their favorite events, teams, and players was to travel to either Las Vegas or Atlantic City and work that action in person, but once the U.S. Supreme Court overturned PASPA that year everything changed.

Now gradually over thirty states including Illinois have created their own sports betting market and all those wagers that used to flow out of state to unregulated offshore sportsbooks have been placed in the state and that has shifted that outward cash flow back inward to be taxed.

Since March 2020 when the first legal wagers were taken in Illinois, that state has generated a $14.7 billion handle which has created a total gross revenue of $1.08 billion which, once taxed, has created $174 million in new revenue that funds a variety of public programs and services.

A positive shift in the number of bettors who signed up to use legal sportsbooks in Illinois occurred once lawmakers changed the initial requirement they had imposed where the only way to register to gamble was to sign up in person at one of the state’s land-based casinos.

Since March 2022, however, Illinois sports bettors can sign up to wager online and that move has created a surge of new gamblers there who now join the millions of others already legally betting in the U.S.

Since 2018, the Total U.S. Sports Betting Handle is $157B, Total Revenue is $11.6B

The total sports betting handle in the U.S. since May 2018 is $157 billion and the total gross revenue that figure has generated for sportsbooks is $11.6 billion which has equated to $1.84 billion in additional tax revenue for those states.

More states are gradually joining the legal sports gambling party and the overall quality of the betting experience in the U.S. is increasing thanks to the regulation of those new markets, now trustable unlike the offshore versions that in the past were a bettor's only option.