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The Christmas season has come and gone. Some earned lumps of coal from Saint Nick, while others scored big gifts. New York’s sports betting industry is in the latest category — as they earned millions during the Christmas scene.
Yes, millions of folks across the Empire State spent their holiday break throwing money on NFL, NBA, and boxing. Some may scope them for ignoring their friends or family. Us? We say they were probably trying to get their wallets up to pay for gifts to the same people.
Anywho, let’s take you into the record-breaking week across New York’s best sports betting apps. It put an exclaimation point on what’s going to end up as a banner year for the entire state’s betting sector.
Christmas Was One Of New York’s Best-Ever Months
Since sports betting was legalized in state in January 2022, New York sportsbooks have only netted $60 million in a single week on five occasions. One of those was Christmas week — December 23 to December 29. It marked the last full week of the 2024 year.
During that week-long stretch, bookies won $61.5 million from bettors — this is the money they kept after paying out winners. It also marked the second-most this NFL season, which started in September. This winnings came off of $519.8 million bet by players. That’s an 11.8 percent hold, the highest since they earned over $69 million on a 14.4 percent hold in mid-September this year.
More impressive, this was up big time from a year ago during Christmas. Get this, 2024 bested 2023 by a whopping 80.9 percent. It’s hard to pull numbers like that.
But what’s the cause of this huge uptick? Perhaps the introduction of two NFL Christmas day games. In what’s likely going to be a new tradition, the NFL hosted a pair of games on Christmas, which landed on Wednesday. Not only that, but they were live streamed on Netflix for the first time ever. Netflix, for their part, hired Beyonce to host a halftime show in the Texans vs. Ravens game that felt very Super Bowl-esque.
Probably helping matters is both those games featured the favorites winning handedly. Baltimore won, and so did the Kansas City Chiefs over the Steelers. Bookmakers usually win big when the underdogs get clobbered, which happened here.
Which Bookmakers Did The Best Over Christmas?
New York has the highest tax rate on sports betting at 51 percent. But even then, when this much money is being bet in the state, operators have a chance at banking big. That’s certainly what happened over Christmas. But who won the most?
That would be FanDuel, who are the kings of New York if numbers are to be believed. FanDuel was responsible for $30.1 million of the revenue, which is half of the total. That’s impressive. A big reason for FanDuel’s success is a high hold. Over Christmas, it was 14.1 percent for the Flutter Entertainment-owned company. These folks know how to wash bettors of their hard-earned money, that’s for sure.
DraftKings finished second with $18.1 million in revenue. That revenue is $8 million more than the previous week for comparison’s sake. All these winnings came from $165.6 million wagered by bettors during the week.
Elsewhere, Fanatics Sportsbook continued its upward trajectory, posting $43.5 million in handle to claim third place among New York operators. Its double-digit hold translated into $4.5 million in revenue — a jaw-dropping 683% increase week-over-week. They are starting to make a name for themselves in this market so keep close tabs on them in 2025.
BetMGM followed with a $37.5-million handle, while Caesars came in close behind at $36.5 million. ESPN BET struggled to sustain the prior week’s momentum, slipping to an $8.9-million handle and falling behind BetRivers, which reported $10.1 million in wagers. Despite the dip, ESPN BET still managed a remarkable 408 percent week-over-week profit increase.
See, everyone was a winner in New York’s sportsbook scene that week. Some more than others, but it’s hard to complain about huge revenue beats across the board like these.
2024 Was A Record Year For New York
We don’t know all of 2024’s numbers as the commission hasn’t quite publicized them yet (soon though). But when it’s all said and done, it’ll end up as the most lucrative year for New York’s sportsbook scene gambling industry.
When November numbers were finalized, we found out the state was up to $965 million in tax revenue from January to November. That’s already a state record. It’ll surely cross $1 billion and likely come up just shy of $1.1 billion. No other state has hit that billy mark since sports betting began getting legalized in 2018.
For perspective, New York netted $860 in taxes all of 2023. So it did around 25 percent better year-over-year. That’s a torrid pace of growth, which should set the stage for a bigger, better 2025.
Will 2025 score $1.25 billion in tax revenue? We think that’s probably a conservative estimate. If we’re being honest, $1.4 billion might be within reach. We see no signs of stagnation in the market. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s good to be New York, ain’t it?
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