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No other state in the country has a legal betting market like New York’s. Not one. The Empire State has fully legal sports wagering, both via mobile betting apps and physical sportsbooks. There’s also legalized casino betting, only in-person though.
Looking at the raw numbers, both those betting businesses are booming — and we mean booming. Record after record continues to be set or met during these summer months. Let’s get into the blow-out business of New York betting.
Sports Betting Produces Biggest Revenue Month Ever
May numbers are fully out. The number that jumps off the page is the $248.9 million. That is the gross gaming revenue (GGR), and it’s the highest ever recorded in state history (betting was legalized here in early 2022). It was 0.8 percent better than the previous record set in January of this year.
Honestly, this shocked us. A lot. May isn’t usually a big sports month, not compared to January when the NFL is wrapping up its regular season and marching toward the Super Bowl. Almost every state sets these records during the NFL season, not now. So what could’ve spurred the anomaly? Well, the New York Knicks had a magical run to the Conference Finals in May, which certainly helped.
It was the Knicks’ first Eastern Conference Finals appearance since 1999, and local bettors came out in droves. The betting handle hit $2.21 billion for the month. That’s the third month in a row that New York was above the $2 billion mark. Though compared to the January 2025 month we mentioned earlier, it was 10.8 percent below. So while bettors placed fewer bets in May than they did at the start of the year, operators managed to keep more of it.
That metric is called “hold.” For May, the hold — as in what the operator keeps after paying out wins — was an impressive 11.23 percent. Our guess for why it’s so high is that many bettors bet Knicks to the high heavens, and they didn’t deliver. They were eliminated in six games by the Indiana Pacers.
Let’s shift our focus to how much of that money the state of New York actually keeps. Remember, they have a 51 percent tax, the highest in the country. So that means they had a huge come-up in May. The state will keep $126.9 million, which is 22.4 percent better than this time a year ago. With this tax keep, the state is up to $3.2 billion in money brought in since sports betting was legalized three and a half years ago.
The biggest winners aren’t the bettors, the lawmakers, or the operators, though. It’s actually the New York education system. They get the majority of the sports betting tax. We hope the kids are learning at the expense of the bettor’s heartbreaking losses.
New York Operators Are Eating Good Too
Let’s talk about the operators, as in, who’s the king of New York? That would be FanDuel, who posted $108.8 million in GGR off a handle of $803.1 million in May. That’s good for a 13.54 percent hold — the highest among all major operators.
DraftKings, which briefly overtook FanDuel in March before slipping back in April, stayed in second. It brought in $84.2 million on $785 million wagered for a 10.73 percent hold.
Fanatics locked up the third spot with $18 million in GGR on a $190.6 million handle. Not far behind was BetMGM, who tallied $14.7 million off $161.2 million. Caesars was next with $13.8 million on $152.3 million. These three operators are in that second tier of operators — solid, but not quite threatening the top.
In the lower tier are Rush Street Interactive and ESPN Bet followed. They scored $4.1 million and $4 million, respectively. Both operated off sub-$50 million handles. Resorts World Bet pulled in $769K from $9.1 million wagered and Bally Bet rounded out the market with $631K in revenue from $12 million in bets.
Casinos Are Making Bank Too
It’s not just sports betting that’s making a killing in the Empire State. The casinos had their second-best month too with $62.9 million in GGR during May. As a frame of reference, that’s a hair above 10 percent from this same period a year ago.
Slot machines led the way as usual, pulling in $45.3 million — up 11.6 percent from last May. Table games brought in $16.2 million, up 7.3 percent year-over-year. And finally, poker added just under $1 million. Retail sports betting actually gets counted here, and it netted a meager $406,000. That just goes to show how dominant the mobile apps are compare to in-person gambling.
Anyways, the New York casino business is only going to get better from here. We’ve covered this story before, but multiple casinos are vying for licenses in New York City. Right now, all casinos are upstate, but that’ll be changing soon. There are eight bids and only three will get chosen, sometime this year by the state’s gaming commission.
Given the affluence of the city, these three licenses are expected to print money — no matter who wins the bids. All it’s going to do is cement New York as the new mecca of legalized betting (sorry, Las Vegas!).
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