New York sportsbooks received more bets and made more money than ever before during January, with handles and revenues soaring to unprecedented heights. The New York tax coffers swelled as well, with record-setting collections of their own.
New Year Bonanza
New York boasts the largest sports betting market in the nation, and if January is any indication, then 2025 will be its biggest year on record. The New York State Gaming Commission (NYSGC) reported the combined handles of all of its sportsbooks totaled a whopping $2.48 billion, topping the previous high of $2.32 billion, set in October 2024, by 6.9%.
New York licenses nine sportsbooks, including Caesars, DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Fanatics, Bally Bet, Resorts World Bet, ESPN BET and BetRivers. Those sports betting platforms combined for a year-over-year increase of 25.9%, and January 2025 was the fifth consecutive month with handles north of $2 billion.
As for revenues, all those sports bets turned into record-breaking profits as well. According to the NYSGC, the combined gross gaming revenue soared to $247.0 million in January, breaking the previous record of $231.6 million set in November 2024 by 6.7% on a nearly 10% hold for the month. New York’s tax coffers collected a record-setting $149 million in January, including a $23 million adjustment by BetMGM.
FanDuel Reigns Supreme
Not surprisingly, Flutter Entertainment’s FanDuel retained its status as New York’s most popular mobile sportsbook, reporting a record-setting $965.1 million in wagers on an 11.53% hold that rendered another high-water mark of $111.3 million in January. It was the fourth consecutive month that FanDuel handled more than $900 million in bets in the Empire State.
Boston-based bookmaker DraftKings also posted impressive numbers with $837.9 million in bets, realizing revenue of $82.0 million on a 9.79% hold. The iconic Las Vegas gaming brand, Caesars, handled $163.2 million in wagers for the month on a 9.68% hold that produced revenues of $15.8 million.
Fanatics continued its ascension in New York’s sports betting market with $194.1 million in bets in January, generating $15.1 million in revenues on hold of 7.78% for January. BetMGM rounded out the top five, reporting a $194.8 million handle, delivering $14.8 million on a 7.6% hold.
Fanatics Quickly Building a Base
Fanatics Sportsbook built its base off its parent company’s merchandising database and its purchase of Aussie-based PointsBet’s sports betting licenses. The company’s strategic initiatives are paying dividends according to research firm Eilers and Krejcik Gaming (EKG), stating that the company grew its market share by 0.5% last year and has now secured 5% of the market, placing Fanatics third in the US market ahead of established brands like BetMGM, Caesars, Bet365 and Hard Rock.
Although not a threat to overtake the duopoly of FanDuel and DraftKings, which controls roughly 74% of the domestic mobile gaming market, EKG did refer to the upstart company as “one of the challenger brands capable of making a dent in the U.S. duopoly.”
Fanatics COO Scot McClintic considered the progress already made in such a short time, operating in 95% of the market in the two years since it was launched, and what’s ahead.
“We’ve been in evolutionary mode; now, we’re going into revolutionary mode,” stated McClintic. “We spent the first two years of this journey setting up the infrastructure and iterating on the technology. We invested very heavily in data in the early days. And we’ve been benefiting from all the strategic investment bets we made over the last few years. We feel we exited 2024 in a place where we can do things with our technology and our product that very few other operators can do because we took all the pain in the first years,” he added.
