Now July is well underway, a reflection on the first six months of 2024 in the New York sports betting market enables us to consider what lies ahead for the second half of the year.
New York mobile sports betting reached $10.99 billion in the first half of 2024. That handle figure is up 20.7% compared with $9.1 billion in the opening six months of 2023.
The nine legal sportsbooks in New York are well on course to beat the previous annual numbers too. They were $16.38 billion for the whole of 2022 and $19.64 billion for 2023.
Drawing tentative conclusions from betting activity in New York, the second half of 2024 is likely to be bigger still. In 2023, the period from July through December was almost 10% higher in terms of dollars wagered in the state than the six months prior. Assuming that trend plays out for the rest of the year, another record will be broken.
Analysts still ponder whether sports betting has reached its high point. The latest assessments consider that the New York sportsbooks will consistently achieve $2 billion in handle a month during the football season. With the September 5 NFL kickoff growing closer, new Empire State betting operator performance standards could be set this fall and winter.
It’s become a tale as old as the time since sports betting was legalized across the US and in the State of New York itself. No sportsbook has yet found a way to nibble at the dominant market share of the leaders FanDuel and DraftKings.
FanDuel remains the biggest sportsbook in New York having averaged a market share of 40.7% for the opening 26 weeks of 2024. DraftKings followed with 36.0%. Behind that duo sat Caesars on 9.1% and then BetMGM accounting for 6.6% of all online sports wagers in the state.
In terms of handle (total amount wagered), the market share positioning for all of New York's sportsbooks for the first half of this year stood as follows:
Sportsbook | NY Market Share - First Half of 2024 |
FanDuel | 40.7% |
DraftKings | 36.0% |
Caesars | 9.1% |
BetMGM | 6.6% |
Fanatics | 3.5% |
BetRivers | 3.1% |
BallyBet | 0.5% |
Resorts World Bet | 0.4% |
WynnBet | 0.2% |
We still have to wait a while for ESPN Bet to launch in New York. That is still predicted to be in the latter part of this year. In the interim, it is the performance of Fanatics Sportsbook that’s the unfolding story of those who could challenge the superiority of the biggest betting brands.
Acquiring the license previously held by PointsBet, Fanatics NY Sportsbook began its Empire Stare journey in February this year. The betting site bearing the name of the biggest sports merch brand in the US benefited from not having a standing start. Until its closure, PointsBet had averaged a market share of 1.2% with a loyal customer base.
While Fanatics transitioned former PointsBet users onto its new sportsbook, a few will have been lost. However, Fanatics has slowly gone from strength to strength since. An average weekly market share of 3.9% since launch doesn’t tell the full story though.
Fanatics’ slice of the New York sports betting market is creeping ever upward, hitting a high of 5.2% for the final week of June (aside from its massive opening week). There’s a long way to go and ESPN Bet may yet position itself as the key entrant to challenge for newbies to sports betting but chiefs at Fanatics will be encouraged by their performance so far.
All that market share analysis above simply confirms that acquiring new customers for any sportsbook is both hard and costly. The biggest betting brands have scaled back their marketing budgets this year and sportsbook users are notoriously loyal to their chosen app or site.
It’s also true that until now bettors are a traditionalist bunch. On the face of it, all of the top sportsbooks follow similar formats as to how they lay out their apps. They all display the most popular bet types as their main focus with the moneyline, points spread and over/under markets featuring prominently for the biggest games. Menu arrangements and bet slip functionality are also notably devised to a similar standard.
For now, and until a true disrupter and innovator emerges with a product that will reset the entire approach to sportsbook platforms, betting operator success rests largely with revenue. Gross Gaming Revenue is a key metric that describes how much a sportsbook retains after winning bets have played out. And the best betting sites in New York are getting better at it.
For the entirety of 2023, New York sportsbooks achieved an average weekly hold rate (GGR: Handle ratio) of 8.7%. By comparison, for the first 26 weeks of 2024, the average hold rate had risen to 9.1%.
At first glance that doesn’t look much but with the numbers involved in New York sports betting mean it truly is. That rise of 0.4% equates to $450 million more having been held by the gambling operators, a considerable amount. And still the improvement continues. In the 12 weeks including and prior to June 30, New York betting companies’ combined hold rate rose to double-digits.
It would be remiss not to conclude a New York sports betting review of 2024 and not mention the controversy that still swirls around the industry. Prominent figures in the state and federal legislatures continue to push for greater controls on gambling companies.
The drive to curb gambling excesses has been amplified by tawdry headlines involving sports stars from some of the biggest leagues in the US. In the last two years, dozens of athletes, coaches and other employees of sports teams have been suspended, fired or punished by other means for gambling rule violations.
Jontay Porter was one of the big names to have been caught breaking the rules this year. Tucupita Marcano is currently deemed ineligible to play for the San Diego Padres while under suspicion. A host of other players have either been found guilty or are awaiting the outcome of investigations.
Meanwhile, the underground betting market continues to thrive with millions of dollars wagered with offshore operators. It was an unlicensed sportsbook at which Ippei Mizuhara, a former interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani, had placed bets after allegedly stealing millions from the MLB star.
As we settle into the second half of 2024 and look ahead to the rest of the year and beyond, how big the US and New York betting industry can become is still impossible to predict. What does seem predictable though are further controversies and subsequent tightening of the regulations. How that impacts the industry and its biggest players remains to be seen.
