NFL Betting Taking Over in New York

The opening weekend of the 2022 NFL season is over, and it was a weekend that brought NFL betting. New York has posted numbers for opening weekend, with some mixed results.

NFL Betting Taking Over in New York

New York sportsbooks continued to put up solid numbers throughout the summer while waiting for the return of NFL football. Now that the NFL betting is back in action, sportsbooks in New York are once again expected to start shattering some records.

According to the most recent report after the bets were totaled in Week 1, sportsbooks took in $330 million in bets from September 4-11. Other states don’t announce weekly sports betting handle like New York, but no other state could compete with those numbers.

GeoComply tracks unique sports betting transactions in the state, and there were nearly 16 million of them during the first weekend of the 2022 NFL season. Now that NFL betting season has returned, New York should once again start pumping out months with over $1 billion in handle.

This was the highest weekly handle total since early May in New York, and those numbers are expected to continue to climb in the coming weeks. One surprising note from the first full weekend of sports betting though is the fact that DraftKings Sportsbook was gaining on FanDuel Sportsbook.

FanDuel has dominated in terms of market share and total sports betting handle since launch, but things have tightened up. DraftKings was able to grab a 35.5% market share for Week 1 of the NFL season while FanDuel saw its number drop to 39%.

Not Meeting Expectations

Despite a massive number in terms of total sports betting handle, the state of New York actually fell short of the lofty expectations. Based on some previous weeks of NFL betting and March Madness betting earlier in the year, New York sportsbooks were expecting a much higher total.

The first full week of legal online sports betting in New York saw a total handle of $432 million, and there was over $573 million just one week later. Bettors were eager to place bets when sportsbooks first launched, and those operators were also offering huge bonuses and promotions.

Those bonuses are not going to be coming back in the state of New York as operators are already being forced to pay a 51% tax on all revenue.

New Jersey Bouncing Back?

The state of New Jersey also made an announcement on Friday as it posted the August sports betting report. The total sports betting handle for that state was $546.8 million, which was an increase of nearly three percent from July.

New Jersey had a couple of months earlier in 2022 with a total handle of more than $1 billion, but the state is starting to lose customers to its neighbor. Despite the numbers trending in the positive direction when comparing each month, year-over-year sports betting is going the wrong way.

The August 2021 handle was 17% higher than what was recorded last month, and that is a trend that doesn’t bode well for the state, or for the sports betting operators.