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Expanded Legal Betting Access Leads to Record Year

  • It’s a whopping 72.7% increase from 2021’s record of $4.3 billion.
  • Sportsbooks also handled $93.2 billion in bets — another record and a 61.1% increase over 2021’s handle.
Sports gambling reached an all-time high in 2022.
Sarah Kloepping/Imagn Images

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As legal sports betting becomes more prevalent across the United States, the industry continues to break revenue records.

Commercial sports betting revenue hit a new all-time high of $7.5 billion in 2022 — a whopping 72.7% increase from 2021’s record of $4.3 billion — per data from the American Gaming Association.

Legal sportsbooks handled $93.2 billion in bets last year — another record and a 61.1% increase over 2021’s handle. When the tribal sports betting handle is reported later this year, that number will likely surpass the $100 billion mark.

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The industry got a boost from the additions of a legal betting market in Kansas and the launch of mobile betting in Louisiana, Maryland, and New York — the latter led all individual states with $1.4 billion in revenue last year.

Three other states passed the half-billion mark: Illinois ($795M), New Jersey ($763M), and Pennsylvania ($597M). All but two markets increased their handles last year: Delaware (-32.3%) and Mississippi (-9.2%).

Since PASPA was struck down in May 2018, American bettors have placed $190.3 billion in wagers, creating $14.6 billion in sports betting revenue and $3 billion in state and federal taxes.

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