New Jersey’s Sports Betting Handle in August Hits a Record $668m

In August, New Jersey’s sports betting handle shattered the all-time monthly record after reporting a whopping $667.9 million in wagers placed by players for the month according to the latest numbers released by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (NJDGE). This incredible figure is over two times as much as the $315 million handle that the state brought in for July.

From this record-breaking handle, sports betting operators in New Jersey accrued an impressive $39.5 million in revenue, to mark the Garden State’s third-highest revenue for a month. The August revenue is also a significant rise from the $29.6 million revenue that the sportsbook operators collected in July.

The record for the highest ever monthly total for any state in the USA was initially held by Nevada after generating a handle of $614 million back in November 2019. Well, the Garden State owes this fantastic achievement to the full slate of NHL, NBA, and MLB games that took place in August after a lengthy pandemic induced hiatus.

Mobile Betting Continues to Lead the Way

It’s also worth noting that 90.1% of all the sports betting handle for August came from wagers placed on mobile devices. This means that of the total $614 million in wagers, about $601.9 million was collected from bets staked via mobile devices.

However, the volume of mobile bettors isn’t such a huge surprise given the current COVID-19 crisis that the state is struggling to beat. From the data, it is clear that most bettors avoided showing up in person at the sportsbook to place wagers and chose mobile betting instead.

Either way, even before the impact of the coronavirus, most sportsbooks in the Garden State have been taking in over 80% of wagers via online and mobile platforms for the last 14 months.

Crunching the NJ August Numbers

From the figures that were announced by the NJDGE, the “other” sports betting category was once again the darling of New Jersey’s sports betting in August as it was in July. For clarification purposes, the “other” category comprises all the wagers that were collected from all other events excluding football, basketball, baseball, and parlays. Alongside less popular sports (betting-wise) such as table tennis, UFC, and golf, this “other” category also counts wagers placed on the NHL, and in total, $204.9 million in wagers was collected.

Back to the most popular sports for sports betting, basketball nabbed the top spot for August in the Garden State after bringing in a $166.2 million handle followed closely by baseball where $150 million worth of wagers was staked on completed games. Parlay bettors also made a killing for the sports betting industry in New Jersey after pulling in a $144.9 million handle.

For individual sportsbook operators in the Garden State, PointsBet and FanDuel, the two Meadowlands licensee skins continued staying atop the market after collecting $21.2 million in revenue after a massive 78.2% year-on-year revenue surge. DraftKing’s online sportsbook host, the Resorts Digital came in second after collecting a revenue of $10 million to record 49.3% more returns compared to August 2019.  Lastly, the second runner up for the sportsbook operator race was Borgata with only $4.5 million in revenue which is however outstanding as the operator’s proceeds jumped by a monstrous 383.4% in comparison to last year’s figure in August.