Among the many spreadsheet pages I have for sports betting revenue is one called “running win rates.” As each state report is published, I add it to all the ones before it for the calendar year and come up with a cumulative hold dividing gross revenue into handle.
On Oct. 10, after Maryland reported an 11.2% hold as operators kept $73.1 million of a then-record $651 million wagered in September, the cumulative national hold for 2025 was 9.995%. Sportsbooks had won $9.534 billion in gross revenue from $95.393 billion handle. It remains the high point for the known national hold on gross revenue this year.
But the truth is the overall hold for portions of the year when including Tennessee and Nebraska was all but certain to be above 10%. That’s three full percentage points above the still articulated but very outdated 7% industry standard.
Even with a strong March by the betting public, sportsbooks have spent most of 2025 cleaning up and cleaning house. For the first time in the post-PASPA era, there will be at least six months in a calendar year when the national hold was 10% or higher, highlighted (or lowlighted depending on your perspective) by a 12.4% win rate in June.
In the spirit of Festivus, reviewing numbers this year has left me with a lot of problems with you people — even with a month to go in terms of revenue reports.
Circumstantial evidence
We will never truly know if the national hold did indeed surpass 10%, even if practically everything points to it. The Tennessee Sports Wagering Council (SWC) does not collect operator revenue data since it taxes handle, and the Nebraska Racing and Gaming Commission does not publish handle figures from its casinos that offer sports betting.
The American Gaming Association (AGA) “Revenue Tracker” offers estimates for Tennessee’s monthly sports betting revenue based on national trends for a given month and “historic hold rates” from wagering in the state. The only issue with this is we are now 29 months since the SWC published a revenue figure to create a hold rate.
In the first eight months of 2025, the AGA estimated Tennessee sportsbooks crafted an 11.7% hold in generating $402 million in operator revenue from $3.45 billion worth of wagers. Add that to the figures at the time of Maryland’s September report being published, and the hold climbs to 10.05%.
And before you ask, “Could Nebraska bring it back under 10%?,” know its $5 million-plus revenue would have required $575.5 million handle to drag the win rate down to 10%. That is a hold below 0.9%.
So in a word… no.
It’s the parlays, stupid
I have beaten this horse so much in recent years I feel like Al Czervik from Caddyshack. Mainly, “This steak still has marks from where the jockey was hitting it.”
This has been the ongoing evolution of the sports betting product, and it’s not changing course. Operators saw they had a winner with Same Game Parlays (SGP), bettors continue to wager said Same Game Parlays — and parlays in general — and the overall hold spirals higher and higher.
If $7 out of every $20 is going towards parlays, no one should be surprised sportsbooks are keeping almost $1 out of every $10 wagered overall. The issue for 2025, and potentially beyond, is that bettors just have not been very good at those wagers.
The group of six states (I’m excluding Nevada because its parlay handle at $10.9 million is insignificant despite the 25.5% hold) that publish parlay handle and revenue figures have a collective 18.63% win rate. Those sportsbooks have reaped $2.11 billion from $11.34 billion worth of multi-leg wagers, and that hold will likely climb when Illinois publishes its November figures given it looks to be another month with an overall 10%-plus win rate.
Three of those states — Mississippi, Oregon, and Maryland — have year-to-date holds above 21%. Colorado bettors remain the best of the bunch, but operators’ near-16% win rate there is up 1.4 percentage points compared to the full-year 2024 hold.
All five states that have published figures through November have reported year-to-date parlay revenue greater than 2024 full-year numbers. Illinois was $25.9 million short through October.
Mississippi deserves special mention in achieving this feat despite parlay handle being 16.3% less compared to the $100.8 million wagered in 2024. Then again, that will happen when you have two months with parlay holds above THIRTY PERCENT.
| State | 2025 YTD Parlay Revenue | 2025 YTD Parlay Hold | # of Months with 20%-Plus Hold | 2024 Parlay Revenue | Change in Percentage Points |
| Illinois* | $679,857,309 | 17.71% | 6 | $705,782,592 | +0.42 |
| New Jersey | $666,433,534 | 18.69% | 6 | $640,915,686 | +1.23 |
| Maryland | $473,897,844 | 21.08% | 8 | $441,386,166 | +1.78 |
| Colorado | $207,163,831 | 15.95% | 2 | $202,085,319 | +1.41 |
| Oregon | $65,013,981 | 21.73% | 8 | $51,977,320 | +2.27 |
| Mississippi | $19,461,829 | 23.06% | 8 | $19,084,517 | +4.13 |
| *-thru October |
Do the work, people
The best and worst part of social media as it pertains to sports betting is that with a little bit of scrolling with your hashtag of choice, you too can find a seemingly endless list of plays promoted as potential winners for you to wager on. It’s almost as if research is a lost art for the general public: People on social media will look at some of those picks offered, shrug, and go, “That looks reasonable,” in almost similar fashion to finding what they think is the best SGP on the landing page of their preferred app.
The lowest hold over the past 12 months — last December at 5.8% — came due to an overwhelming amount of favorites delivering. NFL money line favorites won at an 81.7% clip (58-13) last December, and since the NFL is the primary driver of handle, it is no surprise sportsbooks suffered.
Fast forward to March, which produced the second lowest hold during those 12 months at 6.3%, when all four No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament advanced to the Final Four. While there was some stratification between the No. 1 seeds and the field, Auburn, Houston, Florida, and Duke were easy names for recreational bettors for wagering and more experienced bettors to have a go at parlaying them together.
One of the more amusing things about this NFL season has been sportsbooks “struggling” to an 8.3% hold in September. But save your pity: The October hold rebounded to 9%, and the current November win rate is 11.9% with roughly 60% of handle tallied.
Raise the industry standard already
Some of this is admittedly like Abe Simpson yelling at clouds. I would complain less about the public’s betting performance if sportsbooks weren’t beating the industry standard by 30% and more seemingly every month.
There have been 342 state revenue reports published this year and 60.2% of them (206) have holds of 10% or higher. Granted, a 19% hold in Mississippi is not the same as a 14.5% win rate in Louisiana, which is not the same as an 8.8% hold in New Hampshire.
But close to 90% (307) showed a hold above the industry-standard 7%. The unweighted median hold is 10.92%, which means 171 revenue reports had a hold at least 56% higher than the industry standard.
When sports betting moved beyond Nevada, parlays did not comprise one-third of handle. It made sense the industry hold was 7% based on overwhelmingly single-event wagering outcomes.
As bettors’ preferences have evolved, the metrics should evolve with them. It is time to raise the industry standard.
And then, hopefully, maybe bettors’ performances will improve to a point they can be argued as feats of strength as opposed to an airing of grievances.
