Maryland officials hail “tremendous” sports betting launch as handle tops $186.1m
Free State reports bumper start to long-awaited online debut with triple-digit handle in just nine days
Maryland’s launch of online sports betting saw Free State sportsbooks take $186.1m in wagers in just the first nine days, according to latest reports from Maryland Lottery and Gaming (MLG).
Releasing its first report since the launch of the state’s online market, MLG officials reported a total of $219m in wagers during November, with online sportsbooks already generating more handle than their retail counterparts.
Retail handle amounted to just $33m in November, representing just 17% of the handle generated by the online market.
Of the state’s seven licensed online sportsbooks, US market leader FanDuel took the most in wagers during the nine-day period, receiving $89.9m, ahead of longtime rival DraftKings, with $69.6m.
The best of the rest title fell to BetMGM, which took $15m in wagers following launch, with Barstool ($5.5m), Caesars ($3.46m) and PointsBet ($1.6m) all breaking the million-dollar barrier.
Rush Street Interactive’s BetRivers brand came in last in November’s early handle rankings, taking just $631,175 in bets following launch, and was the only app taking bets to pay taxes during the period, with $4,261 going to state coffers.
The remaining sportsbook operators used a pre-existing promotional deduction mechanism in Maryland’s regulations to deduct $38.2m in promotional play exemptions from their revenue after paying out winnings to players.
Mobile sportsbooks paid out $160.2m in winnings to Marylanders during the initial nine-day period, once again dwarfing the $28.3m paid out to retail punters over the entire November period.
However, retail sportsbooks paid $700,466 in taxes during the month, far in excess of the $4k paid by their online counterparts.
Despite the state’s great start to mobile sports betting, Maryland Lottery and Gaming director John Martin was pragmatic in his assessment, highlighting the presence of promotional play in the initial figures.
“We expect mobile sportsbook operators to continue to offer a lot of promotional wagers in the coming months as they venture into a new market and work to attract customers,” Martin explained.
“There was tremendous pent up demand, and a lot of people are utilizing promotional offers from multiple operators simultaneously.
“But as many of the operators have acknowledged, this level of promotional play is not sustainable, and based on our regulations, it will be curtailed over time,” the MLG director added.
The numbers serve as a vindication of Governor Larry Hogan’s calls for Maryland’s regulatory entities to push through the state’s sports betting launch following his letter to the MLG and the Sports Wagering Application Review Commission (SWARC) in June.
Despite enabling legislation being signed into law in 2021, the state only launched online sports betting last month following a raft of pressure from Hogan and industry stakeholders.