Illinois Sports Betting Revenue Experienced a Drop in July – Illinoisnewstoday.com

Sports betting in Illinois was launched in March of last year and this state quickly became part of the top five states with the largest sports wagering market in the United States. However, July seems to be the worst month for the states betting industry because of its significant dip in revenue.

Last week, the Illinois Gaming Board has finally released its sports betting figures for July and according to their report, the states betting revenue has dropped to $369.1 million. In June, the states betting handle was at $476.5 million and so, the July revenue is down 22.5 percent.

Based on the report, DraftKings topped the betting market with a total of $122.7 million betting handles from retail and online. FanDuel then accepted a total of $118.5 million in online and retail wagers. Overall, DraftKings generated a total of $9.5 million in gross gaming revenue and FanDuel was able to get $15.5 million.

PlayIllinois.coms lead analyst, Joe Boozell, shared his thoughts on how these two giants in the US betting industry are doing. He said, FanDuel continues to wring out an impressive amount of revenue from the bets it takes in.

DraftKings answered with Same Game Parlays, which could help bridge the revenue gap with FanDuel. That fierce competition between the two market leaders will only grow during football season, with younger operators limited in their ability to make significant gains on the leaders with in-person registration in place.

Why the Down Trend?

There are a few logical reasons why this happened and one of them is how in-person registration is now once again required by the state. Last year, Governor JB Pritzker signed an executive order to waive this requirement because of the pandemic. However, now that casinos have already reopened, the EO is no longer in effect, and punters should then go to licensed casinos and register to be able to place their bets online. This could be a tedious process to some and its most likely that many have started to once again place their bets offshore or on an online casino website in India or bookie that is based and licensed elsewhere.

Chris Grove who is an industry analyst for Eilers&Krejcik Gaming said that the in-person registration requirement can only really limit the market. According to Grove, at least 75 and as much as 90 percent of the total sports bets is placed in a state with both online and retail sports betting so the in-person registration requirement just doesnt make sense.

Another plausible reason for Julys revenue drop is that it has always been a slow month for sports betting in all of the states where there is legal betting. This is because there arent plenty of sports events that people are so willing to wager on.

In Illinois, it was baseball hasnt been getting that much attention but its the sport that the locals bet on the most in July when the revenue went down. This just shows that there just really werent many events for the people to wager on. The Olympics was on but people didnt seem to show much interest and PlayUSA.coms analyst, Eric Ramsey, gave a reason why.

Ramsey said, With events held in the middle of the night in many cases and sports that are a bit unfamiliar to bettors, the Olympics did not appear to draw a lot of wagering. In the end, the traditional team sports are still by far the largest draw for bettors, which is why football is so important for sportsbooks.

July features fewer prime betting opportunities and casual bettors are more occupied with vacations and other activities, and there arent many sportsbooks can do about that. Illinois sportsbooks have done well by increasing their hold over the summer months, which puts operators in a good position as casual bettors return, he added.

Expectations for the Following Months

While July has been quite a month for Illinois local sports betting, hopes are up that the following months will be better. This is especially because it is already the NFL season and that the Chicago White Sox will be going to the playoffs.

Gambling.coms analyst Ron Fritz said that the numbers should be able to rebound in the coming months because of these. Fritz said, It will be interesting to see numbers from baseball combined with the NFL. That is why I think August and September could threaten the record of $632 million in March.

Meanwhile, Grove is saying thats its still too early to say if the in-person registration requirement will get in the way of having better numbers in the coming months. He said, Its too early to say definitively, but the reality is that Illinois is a big state with strong sports fandom and a roster of top-tier sportsbooks, so theres no reason why it wont be one of the more productive markets in the United States.

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Illinois Sports Betting Revenue Experienced a Drop in July - Illinoisnewstoday.com