Even with New Jersey sportsbooks losing $4.3 million on the Super Bowl in February, they still came out ahead on net revenue for the month. However, the $17 million revenue last month was the lowest figure since June of 2019, according to the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE).
The February handle for sports wagering in New Jersey was $494.8 million. A little over 88% of that figure came from bets made online. The rest came from the eight retail sportsbooks at Atlantic City casinos and the Meadowlands and Monmouth Park racetracks.
New Jersey sports betting operators took a similar loss for the 2019 Super Bowl ($4.5 million) while only posting $12.7 million in net revenue.
In the first two months of this year, players lost 4.2% of their money betting on football and 4% betting on basketball. Single-game wagers in other sports had a combined 6.2% house margin. However, the significant figure for the first two months of 2020 came from multi-bet parlays.
The sportsbooks had a hold of 17.9% on the parlay handle for the first two months on a total bet amount of $190 million, which is a slight increase over the single-game bets made on this season’s NFL playoff games. That means even though parlay bets accounted for a little under 20% of the total bets, they accounted for almost half of the sportsbook revenue for January and February.
The Meadowlands Racetrack and its main online partner, FanDuel Sportsbook, took in almost $11 million of the $17 million total for February. Resorts Digital and its partner, DraftKings, took in $4 million for the month.
The top-earning land-based casino, by a significant margin, for the month was Borgata, which took in $714,024. Golden Nugget took a loss to the tune of $444,311. Both Harrah’s and Resorts did slightly better than breaking even with each taking in a little less than $50,000. The last six months have had the six highest handle figures since sports betting began in New Jersey in June 2018.
In March of last year, highlighted by the men’s NCAA basketball tournament, there was a bigger handle for the New Jersey sportsbooks than any of the next six months. However, this month will take a big hit because the March Madness tournament was canceled and both the NHL and NBA are on indefinite suspensions.