The Massachusetts Gaming Commission reported Bay State sportsbooks combined for a 10.3% hold in July on Thursday as handle soared nearly 40% to $411.8 million.
The three retail and seven mobile operators collectively claimed $42.2 million in gross sports betting revenue, which was up just over 40% compared to July 2023. The win rate was nearly two full percentage points higher than June, which meant gross revenue was practically flat month over month.
The state was able to tax $41.2 million in adjusted gross revenue, which re-directed close to $8.2 million into Massachusetts coffers. While not an exact like-for-like comparison because mobile wagering was not available until March of last year, the $71.7 million in tax receipts for the first seven months of 2024 is $25.9 million more than the same span in 2023.
No one sports betting app had a breakaway July, but Fanatics Sportsbook, DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM all had win rates ranging from 10.3% to nearly 11%. DraftKings ran its streak of $200 million monthly handles to 11, topping the benchmark by $2.1 million while collecting $20.8 million in gross winnings to fashion a 10.3% hold.
It was the first time DraftKings — which accounted for 49.9% of the $405.2 million in mobile bets accepted — had a double-digit hold since January and seventh time in 17 months of mobile wagering in the Bay State.
FanDuel narrowly missed its fourth consecutive month with an 11% win rate in reporting $13.2 million in revenue from $119.9 million in handle. The clear-cut No. 2 mobile book in Massachusetts, FanDuel topped $2.5 billion in all-time handle and $275 million in overall revenue.
BetMGM’s uptick in favorable outcomes — its 10.3% hold was up more than three percentage points from June — led to a 17.3% bounce in revenue to $2.8 million. Like DraftKings, it was the first double-digit hold for BetMGM since January and second time in the last nine months after reaching that benchmark in each of its first eight months.
While it was the first time since last August that Fanatics had a 10%-plus hold, the 10.9% win rate for July marked the first time it achieved a double-digit hold with at least $10 million handle after accepting $21 million worth of bets. The $2.3 million in revenue was an all-time monthly high, bettering the $1.8 million claimed in May.
Glass Half-Empty or Glass Half-Full?
Both ESPN BET and Caesars had year-over-year gains when it came to revenue, and ESPN BET’s $1.5 million in revenue was a near four-fold increase from what Barstool Sportsbook produced in 2023.
In the here and now, however, the two brought up the rear for handle among the six legacy mobile sportsbooks as ESPN BET slid under $20 million in handle for the first time since launch last November.
Caesars shook off a rough June in winning $964,000 for July, but the $13.2 million handle was down 32.6% from the previous month. It had a month-over-month decline of 10.6% from the previous June into July.
Bally Bet, which made Massachusetts its eighth state of business with a July 2 launch, had a 5% hold in keeping $121,300 of the $2.4 million in handle generated. Since the MGC does not publish promotional spend, it is unknown how much of that total was credits and bonuses, but Bally Bet’s first-month handle nearly matched the 2023 full-year handle of microbetting-focused Betr, which launched in May 2023 but left the state in February.
