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New Jersey’s 2020 Sports Betting Handle Hits a Record $6 Billion
By Jeff Osienya Jan 18, 2021 IndustryThe Garden State has finally managed to topple Nevada and become the largest sports betting market in the US after five successive record-smashing months to hit a $6 billion annual handle in 2020.New Jersey has officially been crowned the King of sports betting in the USA thanks to consecutive months of record-shattering sports betting handles since July when sports competitions resumed from a lengthy Covid-19 hiatus. The Garden State nabbed the top sport from Nevada which had been the reigning champion of sports betting in the country for nearly a century.
Per the numbers published by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (NJDGE) late last week, New Jersey’s total handle for the 2020 calendar year hit a whopping $6,016,968,399 after blowing past its monthly handle records for the fifth month in a row. For the month of December, sports bettors in the Garden State spent a total of $996,300,794 in wagers, missing the $1 billion mark by a whisker. Decembers handle was over 9% higher than that of November when the state saw about $932 million spent on sports bets.
Nevada has effectively slipped to the second position in the USA’s sports betting market now that New Jersey obliterated its $5.4 billion yearly handle record that it had set for the 2019 calendar year. It was pretty easy for the Garden State to destroy the Silver State’s annual handle record given that for the last 5 months of 2020 alone, sports bettors in New Jersey spent a total of $4.1 billion in wagers. So, despite the slower months at the start of the year due to the pandemic, this sports betting handle trophy belonged to New Jersey even before the release of December figures.
How Did New Jersey Rise to Finish the Sports Betting Race First in 2020?
Three vital conditions led to New Jersey’s impressive win in 2020. For starters, the Garden State boasts of having a population of nearly 9 million compared to Nevada’s 3 million, and that is a huge contributing factor.
Better yet, New Jersey was favored by its sports betting laws which allow remote registrations in about two dozen sportsbook apps anywhere in the state. Nevada on the flip side is more conservative with its mobile betting laws and only accepts in-person registrations.
The in-person registration restriction dampened Nevada’s potential particularly in 2020, a time when social distancing restrictions were in play and casino capacity limits were imposed for the better part of the year. Even though sports betting facilities in the state tried to salvage the situation by introducing drive-thru registrations, it wasn’t enough to salvage the situation. Mind you, for New Jersey’s case, over 90% of the wagers were placed via online and mobile betting platforms for the last quarter of 2020.
Neighboring states, meaning New York in this case was also another reason why New Jersey’s numbers hit such highs. Data published by industry analysts indicate that about 20% of the Garden State’s sports betting handle comes from the Empire State. Thus, while the second half of 2020 was also generally impressive with record monthly handles as well, it couldn’t possibly be a match for that of the Garden State.
But then, New Jersey’s strength from the neighboring New York might however change as early as this year now that the Empire State is seriously looking at introducing regulated mobile sports betting via the state lottery.
It Was a Good Run for Nevada But Times Have Changed
Well, to make sense of Nevada’s long undefeated winning streak in the sector, we first have to consider that the state legalized sports betting in 1949 and the passing of the PASPA in 1992 further cemented its dominant position. So, until 2018 when the PASPA was repealed by the US Supreme Court, sports betting in the USA was only legal in Nevada and three other states – Montana, Delaware, and Oregon which were also exempt from the law.
However, with the repeal of the PASPA in 2018, New Jersey came in to challenge the top dog and it nabbed the top spot faster than most industry observers had expected, considering that for 2019, the Garden State managed to rack up a $4.58 billion annual handle. No one expected New Jersey to beat its 2019 handle by that much, leave alone by a margin big enough to shatter Nevada’s record haul.
And by the way, for the 2020 calendar year, sportsbooks in Garden State also generated record revenue for themselves, collecting a total of $398.5 million, about $100 million more than what they won in 2019. This was also another record that New Jersey has set after an unusual but immensely successful year for its sports betting sector.
Henceforth, it will be hard for Nevada to regain its position as industry leader owing to such strong competition, and of course, its restrictive laws. As more states continue to legalize the activity, those that have the advantage of higher populations such as New York, Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia will also be eying the number one spot.
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