The Tennessee Sports Wagering Council reported sports betting handle of $465.8 million in January on Tuesday, the third-highest total in 39 months of legal action in the Volunteer State.
Handle was up 13.4% from the $410.8 million generated to open 2023 and down 5.6% from December’s total of $493.3 million worth of accepted wagers. Tennessee‘s fully mobile sportsbooks had the benefit of starting 2024 with the University of Tennessee rolling to a 35-0 rout of Iowa in the Citrus Bowl on New Year’s Day. The state also had a pair of Top 10 teams in the AP Top 25 men’s college basketball poll in mid-January with Tennessee and Memphis, but the Tigers slid out of the poll by month’s end, closing it with four consecutive losses.
Running January/2024 YTD Top 10 #SportsBetting handles by state:
1 New York $1.97B
2 Maryland ~$545M
3 Indiana $480.6M
4 TENNESSEE $465.8M
5 Iowa $259.5M
6 Oregon $67.1M
7 West Virginia $46.4M
8 Maine $38.1M
9 Montana $5.86M
10 TBD#SportsBettingX #GamblingX— Chris Altruda (@AlTruda73) February 13, 2024
The state received close to $8.6 million in taxes based on the 1.85% levy placed on sports betting handle. Tennessee is the only state with commercial wagering to levy taxes based on operator handle as opposed to sports betting revenue, and the Sports Wagering Council has not published monthly operator winnings since switching its format last July. The lack of revenue figures from the SWC prevents any true comparison of taxation methods.
Given the success of operators in other states for January, it is possible Tennessee left tax money on the table. Based on the state’s previous method of taxing revenue at 20%, the projected revenue to match the tax receipts from handle would need to create a 9.23% hold. For January, that amount would be $43 million.
The first eight states to report handle and revenue figures in January have combined for an 11.4% win rate on $3.4 billion worth of bets. Indiana, which can be considered a peer of the Volunteer State with its proximity in handle, had an 11.1% hold on $480.6 million handle.
If that win rate is applied to Tennessee’s handle, that projects to $51.8 million in revenue and $10.4 million in taxes based on the 20% rate. In this instance, the levy on operator revenue would have generated $1.8 million more than the handle tax.
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Tennessee’s tax receipts for January were enough to send the all-time figure above $200 million, making it just the fifth state — along with New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois — to reach that benchmark.
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