New York Revenue Gets Boost from March Madness
Sportsbooks Got Back On Track
After a less-profitable-than-normal week that ended with the first two rounds of the 2024 men’s NCAA Tournament, sportsbooks in New York rebounded in a big way during the week ending on March 31st as March Madness Boosts New York. While the overall handle dipped to $456 million after eclipsing $539 million for the week ending March 24th, the hold rate shot up to nearly 10% as New York sportsbooks took in nearly $42 million in net revenue.
The men’s NCAA Tournament is always huge for betting activity, whether it’s in the early rounds where there are games from noon to midnight on the East Coast for four days in a row, or in the later rounds where the entire country tunes in to intently watch (and bet on) players they might not have ever heard of two weeks before. The issue for sportsbooks in New York this year was that favorites did incredibly well in the Second Round, going 15-1. That was great for gamblers and terrible for sports betting websites, who had a lot of exposure on favored teams.
Things bounced back a bit for the sportsbooks in the second week of the tournament and across the NBA, NHL, and MLB. There was also a ton of interest in the women’s NCAA Tournament thanks to Caitlin Clark, JuJu Watkins, Angel Reese, and other stars so sportsbooks logged a lot of activity on those games as well. Granted, it’s not like the New York books were coming off a bad prior week, it’s just that the handle was sky-high and revenue went down. At the end of March, things got back to normal a bit.
Handle Is Still Very High
To be clear, it’s not like betting interest took a nose dive in the week ending March 31st just because handle dropped by $83 million. That just goes to show how much more interest in terms of pure betting amount there is for the beginning of the NCAA Tournament than there is for the middle. Handle in New York has been consistently well over $400 million — save for the week ending February 4th, 2024 because there were no playoff NFL games — since September 2023, the start of the NFL season.
The March Madness Boosts New York really helped for the week ending March 24th and has carried over in terms of handle. The sportsbooks’ hold went up in the final week of March because there were plenty of notable upsets, namely with N.C. State making an improbable run to the Final Four. While it’s likely that the handle will drop a bit for the beginning of April once those numbers are released, it’s certainly possible that the total revenue earned could stabilize or even go up.
The key thing to remember is that betting websites generally are able to secure large profits regardless of game outcomes because of the nature of the business. But, occasionally, there are such huge events that draw so many similar bets — like how most bettors took UConn to win each of their first two games of the tournament — that sportsbooks can face losses if certain things happen. That can also occur with the Super Bowl, like if the public heavily backs a team that ends up winning.
How Will Numbers Look for April And Beyond?
A big question that sportsbooks always face once the NFL postseason ends and the NCAA Tournament passes is how they will be able to attract bets until the fall rolls around. March Madness Boosts New York is great and could provide for a solid start to April for the sportsbooks but without a tentpole event like the NFL or March Madness for months, the sportsbooks rely on the NBA and NHL playoffs and MLB regular season to solicit wagers.
This year also has the Summer Olympics in Paris which should help things a bit but it’s not like those sports garner a ton of interest in the state-side betting world.
NBA and NHL playoffs games and the MLB regular season certainly attract eyeballs yet they tend to not be able to come close to aggregating the amount of wagers that football receives. There may be a lot more games in terms of day-to-day volume — especially because MLB has close to 15 games a day and the NBA and NHL’s respective postseasons stretch on for months — but Game 4 of a prospective Bucks-Pacers playoff series isn’t going to be widely bet on in New York State.
So, the sportsbooks will have to publish sports gambling odds across more of a variety of events or make them more appealing to bettors if they want to continue the stretch of $400 million-plus handles that have become commonplace in New York. It’ll be interesting to see how the next few weeks and months shake out.
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