NY Weekly Revenue Flat After PointsBet Shows Losses

For the most part, New York has been an incredibly profitable market for sports betting operators. Week in and week out, the public reports have indicated that most operators are profiting on a consistent basis which has led to a windfall of tax revenue for the state.

The week ending on February 25th — the most-recent week available — looked similar to most others except for one glaring exception: the PointsBet losses.

In the final week before Fanatics Sportsbook officially took over PointsBet’s license on February 29th, PointsBet lost a staggering $8.024 million on a nearly $43.9 million handle. It’s rather shocking gambling news considering how New York’s eight other operators all profited nicely in that week.

Overall, New York operators collected $413.9 million in handle that week and brought in $37.2 million in revenue. Those numbers include PointsBet’s figures which shows just how much PointsBet’s underperformance affected the bottom line of the entire state.

Accordingly, weekly revenue fell a few percentage points from the week prior even as handle slightly rose. New York tax collectors will hope that handle continues to grow and that, maybe, Fanatics’ takeover of PointsBet will prevent such a drastic loss from occurring again in the future.

The odds of this kind of outlier loss week happening are pretty low in general so the same thing repeating itself is unlikely. That’s a saving grace for Fanatics and other operators.

Bad Week Came Out of Nowhere

PointsBet’s losses were the second-largest weekly losses in New York sports betting history, only behind BetMGM’s $9.6 million losses during Super Bowl week at the beginning of February.

It also wasn’t exactly the result of a trend of bad performance by PointsBet which had been profitable every week since the week ending on October 29th, 2023. In fact, PointsBet had only lost money in two weeks since the beginning of April 2023.

Fanatics Sportsbook has already had some time to try and turn around the fortunes of PointsBet’s license but we will not know the results of those endeavors for a few more days. It’ll be interesting to see how this rough week ended up affecting PointsBet’s final monthly numbers for February 2024.

In January 2024, PointsBet earned $2.6 million in revenue on $31.7 million in handle, both numbers which were records for PointsBet in New York.

Based on betting trends, it seems likely that PointsBet’s February will be an ugly one. Such an enormous loss figure for just one week can not only wipe out any profits for the rest of the month but will negate a huge chunk of the profits PointsBet accumulated in the past fiscal year.

It’s certainly a fascinating time for Fanatics to take over from PointsBet at such a low point. As the saying goes, things can only go up from here — at least Fanatics can hope so.

Other Operators Did Just Fine

What’s particularly weird about PointsBet’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week is that every other New York gambling operator did just fine. For example, DraftKings profited $15.2 million on $130 million handle in the week ending on February 25th and FanDuel profited $21.1 million on $157.3 million handle in the same week.

It’s not like there was some kind of uniquely large event that could serve as an easy explanation for why PointsBet took such a bad beating.

We might never know specifically what caused the PointsBet losses from the week in question because sport-by-sport breakdowns aren’t released by the New York State Gaming Commission.

All that is publicly available is the weekly and monthly breakdowns for each operator, any potential penalties, net revenue that goes to the operator, and net revenue that goes to education matters in the state (through taxation).

It’s also a bit strange that PointsBet collected almost $43.9 million in handle that week when it collected under $10 million in handle each week since the week ending January 23rd, 2023.

What could have cause such a spike in handle? That is also unclear but it could have something to do with the imminent takeover of PointsBet by Fanatics, making New York the 15th state Fanatics Sportsbook is operating in and the 4th state where Fanatics has taken over for PointsBet in 2024 alone.

Either way, Fanatics has a bit of hole to dig itself out of as it looks to rebrand PointsBet and try to compete with the two-headed New York betting monster of DraftKings and FanDuel.

Fanatics does bring a well-known brand name to the market but, without an established gambling presence in the state, it could take some time to build a loyal bettor base.

For sports news, odds analysis, and more, visit Point Spreads Sports Magazine.

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