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By now, you surely know New York sports betting is king. Despite only launching in early 2022, the state stormed to the top spot, smoking incumbents like Nevada and New Jersey. It helps when you have an affluent population that has two local sports teams in every major league.
Anyway, the question is not whether the Empire State is number one. The question is just how high can they go? Because the entire legal sports betting industry is watching them to see where the ceiling is on the marketplace.
Well, 2025 numbers are out and… the ceiling keeps getting raised. New York betting continued its torrid pace. In this article, we break it all down, and spoiler alert, the future is probably bright.
New York Reaches $26 Billion In 2025
$26.3 billion — that’s how much New Yorkers wagered online in 2025. It’s a high number on the surface, but it only becomes more impressive when you compare it to the year before. You see, it was 16 percent higher than 2024. That’s not a small beat, that’s a full-blown explosion in sports betting.
That’s the headline number on total bets placed, but what matters more is gross revenue — as in how much operators and the state kept to themselves. Here again, it’s an impressive beat. Sports betting apps pulled in $2.55 billion in gross revenue, up 25 percent year over year. Operators are keeping more money not just because there’s more betting, but bettors are losing more. You see, the statewide hold climbed to 9.7 percent, up from 9 percent the year prior.
So which sports betting apps are leading the way? No surprises up top with the usual leaders, FanDuel and DraftKings, combining for 76 percent of all operator revenue. FanDuel alone topped $1.1 billion in revenue for the year. Outside of New York, this is the same trend: FanDuel just barely edging out DraftKings for sportsbook supremacy.
After those top two, there’s a huge drop-off in operator success. BetMGM, Fanatics, Caesars, BetRivers, Bally Bet, and TheScore (PENN’s latest sportsbook after failures with ESPN and Barstool) are left fighting for scraps, usually in that order.
But what about the state itself, how much did they keep of all this torrid sports betting? Well, a lot, thanks to a country-high 51 percent tax rate. New York collected $1.32 billion in tax revenue in 2025. No one, and we mean no other state, is coming even close to pocketing that much money from betting in a single year. To put into perspective, the entire state of Wyoming earned $3.7 billion for its fiscal year 2025 and that’s all state taxes (sales, property, etc.) New York did about one-third of that from sports gambling alone.
So when we ask how high can New York go? We’re still waiting to find out. With double-digit growth still happening four years into the brand-new industry, it feels like the sky is the limit.
2026 Off To A Blockbuster Start
Here’s why we say the sky is the limit: January was much of the same for New York. It was another $2 billion month, which now makes it six in a row for the state. During 2026, only three months (February, June, and July) dipped under $2 billion.
Revenue for month of January officially came in at about $2.5 billion. Now, technically, total handle was down 1.6 percent year over year. But context matters. January 2025 posted an eye-popping 26.6 percent year-over-year jump, which was always going to be hard to replicate.
Revenue actually held stronger than handle, which tells you sportsbooks managed to maintain their edge. Sportsbooks pulled in a near-record $260.2 million in January — just a hair below December’s all-time high of $260.36 million. And once again, the state cashed in. New York collected $132.5 million in tax revenue for the month alone. That’s what a 51 percent tax rate does when the volume never slows down.
Super Bowl Hangover?
The February betting numbers won’t be known until next month. However, it might be a bit of a hangover for the state. Early numbers on Super Bowl betting are not coming in too hot.
New York State Gaming Commission (the official numbers, mind you) said that the NFL finale between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots generated a $144.9-million handle. That’s a 10-percent drop from the $160 million that was bet during last year’s Super Bowl between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs.
But… if there’s a silver lining, it’s that New York had a 3.2% hold on Super Bowl LX, which was almost identical to the previous year. The Big Game ended up creating $46.5 million total in gross revenue for sportsbooks, a meager 2 percent less than in 2025.
New York’s Super Bowl performance was actually pretty on-trend nationally. Nevada also said it saw betting activity on the matchup hit a 10-year low. Not surprisin given the matchup lacked star power compared to the Patrick Mahomes and Taylor Swift games of before.
So yeah, we wouldn’t think too hard about it in regards to the health of New York’s betting industry. This thing is still trending in the right direction for the foreseeable future.
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