May has not been a good month for the New York sports betting market, revenue wise. According to the latest report from the New York Gaming Commission, this is the third straight week that we are seeing less revenue. This could be due to a lot of factors. You can determine this yourself when you look at the numbers of your sportsbook through your pay per head solutions software. Before we go over New York’s, let us take a look at the numbers.
The state has 9 operational online sportsbooks, and for the week ending May 21, they all took in a total of $307.3 million in wagers. This is 3.5% less than the previous week’s. The slump is not so bad, and very minimal. It could easily be due to less sports events than the previous week. When you are managing your on sportsbook through a pay per head service, you will gain enough experience to tell a fluke from the start of a trend. During this month, it may very well be a trend that we may see until at least the football season starts.
New York Sports Betting Revenue and Handle: What the Numbers Mean
The drop in revenue, however, is somewhat worrisome. The week prior, the revenue is at $37 million, while the week ending May 21 is a mere $18.9 million. This gives us a whopping 48% drop in week-on-week revenue. The hold percentage is at 6.15%, which explains the huge drop in revenue.
What does this all mean? Basically, when your handle is lower, you could possibly get a decrease in revenue as well. For New York, the decrease is only at 3%, so it is a marginally slow drop. So the indicator must be in the revenue side of things. In this case, we should look at the hold percentage.
The hold percentage is the margin from which a sportsbook takes from both sides of a wager. Basically, it’s the percentage of money that bookies keep from wagering. According to the report, the hold is at 6.15%, which is quite low. Bettors may have had a good week, as they got to keep more of their money than usual. We’ll take a look at next week’s report when it comes out, to see if it forms a trend, of if the next week will break it. For the meantime, offering sports betting and using a good online casino platform can help with any slump in wagering.