The March of basketball discontent for sportsbooks nationwide reached Nevada on Tuesday when the state’s Gaming Control Board reported $22.3 million in revenue for the month.
Overall operator winnings were down 25.2% year-over-year, with revenue from pro and college basketball declining 24.5%. Silver State sportsbooks were also dinged by bettors cashing winning football tickets as they paid out $10.3 million above the paltry $342,900 worth of tickets written. The 2.6% hold was the seventh-lowest recorded in the post-PASPA era and the second hold in the last four months below 3%.
Statewide handle totaled $859.5 million, which was up 9.4% from 12 months ago. Anecdotal evidence shows that many bettors could have been those who made the trek to Las Vegas previously to wager on the NCAA Tournament and established online accounts in the state — the $612.8 million mobile handle was up 20.9% year-over-year and was the highest since $624.6 million was bet online in November 2023.
Nevada’s March handle also pushed the total known U.S. commercial post-PASPA handle (dating back to June 2018) above $500 billion, of which Nevada has contributed $47.9 billion.
Follow the bouncing orange ball
The NGCB does not break out handle and revenue figures separately for pro and college basketball, but hoops was clearly the biggest act in town in March. The $665.6 million wagered was up 8.9% from March 2024 and was the second-highest figure for a month in the post-PASPA era behind the $708.9 million bet in March 2022.
The 3.7% hoops hold attained by sportsbooks, though, was down 1.6 percentage points from March 2024. It was the fourth consecutive March the win rate declined in basketball and the first time post-PASPA it was below 5.3%.
The catch-all “other” sports category, which includes golf, tennis, soccer, boxing, mixed martial arts, and motorsports in Nevada, provided the other large bucket of revenue with close to $6.6 million. The house had a modest 6.3% hold on $103.6 million worth of wagers across those sports as revenue tumbled 13.9% from the previous year.
Bettors who rode the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights in March were also rewarded as operators eked out a 2% hold on $50.6 million in hockey handle to claim just over $1 million in revenue. Vegas, which went 10-2-2 in March and closed the month with a six-game winning streak, is currently chasing its second Stanley Cup title.
Retail books still trying to gain traction
While retail sportsbooks across Nevada had only a 2.7% hold, that was more than double the 1.35% win rate from March 2024. The brick-and-mortar venues claimed $6.7 million in winnings, an increase of 78.4% from last year, though handle slumped 11.4% to $246.7 million.
March extended a brutal now-four-month stretch for Nevada’s retail sportsbooks, which have claimed $57.4 million in revenue with a 5.9% hold since last December. Revenue is off 39% compared to the same four-month stretch bridging 2023 to 2024, with handle down 13.8% to $966.9 million.
Elsewhere in the western U.S. …
Arizona closed the ledger on a successful January for most sportsbooks in the U.S. on Monday when the state’s Department of Gaming reported $85 million in gross revenue. The Grand Canyon State narrowly missed a 10% hold as its four retail operators and 15 mobile ones accepted $864.2 million worth of wagers.
January marked the third consecutive month Arizona outpaced Nevada for handle during the busier part of the sports calendar, a testament to the mobile infrastructure Arizona has put in place and the limitations of Nevada continuing to require in-person registration to access digital apps. The $67.4 million separating the two states in January was more than double the $27.7 million gap from December’s figures.
Arizona’s mobile sportsbooks were on the front foot in terms of drumming up business in January and were able to deduct $30.4 million in promotional spend. The $53.2 million in taxable revenue still ranked second all-time in state history to the $57.5 million reported last November and resulted in an inflow of $5.3 million to Arizona’s tax coffers.
Skipping back to March, the Colorado Department of Revenue reported a top-five, all-time handle of $618 million, up 4.2% year-over-year. Gross revenue plunged 19.5% to $36.2 million, but the drop in taxable revenue was steeper at 34.7% to $21.9 million.
Bettors held operators to a sub-4% hold and $4.5 million in college basketball bets, with the $112.5 million handle up 9.6% from last year. Some of the public’s college basketball acumen spilled into parlay wagering, where the house had only a 7.4% win rate to claim $10.9 million in winnings. That was down 36.4% from March 2024 despite a 19.7% uptick in handle to $148.2 million.
Another bumper January for the house
The $15.24 billion known commercial handle nationwide for January — Nebraska does not report monthly handle totals and Hard Rock does not release figures from its wagering conducted in Florida — was the second-highest monthly total in the post-PASPA era. It trails only the $15.66 billion totaled in November and marked the third consecutive month at least $15 billion was wagered legally at commercial sportsbooks.
The $1.62 billion in gross revenue was just short of the record $1.67 billion recorded in November, but it was a second consecutive banner January where operators combined for a double-digit hold at 10.6%. All 32 states that report handle and revenue figures topped the 7% industry standard hold in January, with 23 reporting win rates of 10% or better.
Year-over-year handle was up 13.7%, while gross revenue lagged with a 10.6% increase as the January 2025 win rate was three-tenths of a percentage point lower. The $376.2 million in total state tax revenue was an all-time monthly high in the post-PASPA era and up $81.5 million from January 2024. Changes in rates in both Illinois and Ohio contributed to that surge, as did a first month of January operations for North Carolina sportsbooks.
