Mass. sports bettors wager $412M In July
Photo | Courtesy of New England Revolution / Major League Soccer
While sports fans await the start of the National Football League season, competitions like Major League Soccer and the Summer Olympics gave Massachusetts bettors plenty to gamble on in July.
Gambling activities generated more than $140 million in revenue for casinos and sportsbooks in Massachusetts last month, with $36.5 million of that haul due to the state as taxes or fees, the Gaming Commission said Thursday.
Plainridge Park Casino in Plainville, MGM Springfield and Encore Boston Harbor in Everett generated a cumulative $99.47 million in gross gaming revenue during July, almost two-thirds of it at Encore. The state's seven online sports betting companies and the physical sportsbooks at the casinos produced an additional $41.21 million in taxable sports wagering revenue last month.
The Plainville slots parlor is taxed at a rate of 49 percent of its gross gaming revenue, and the two full-scale casinos pay a 25 percent tax on their gross gaming revenue. For July, that worked out to about $28.3 million for the state, the commission said. Revenues from brick-and-mortar sportsbooks are taxed at 15 percent while online gambling revenues are taxed at 20 percent. The commission said July's sports betting resulted in almost $8.2 million in state taxes.
Bettors in Massachusetts risked about $411.8 million on sporting events that took place in July, with more than 98 percent of that in wagers placed over the internet rather than in-person. That's up from about $285.7 million wagered in July 2023. The operators' monthly revenue represented 10.26 percent of the total handle.
Since legal gambling began here in 2015, the state has collected $1.82 billion in taxes and fees from casino-style gaming. It has also taken in $166.61 million in taxes and assessments from sports wagering operations that became legal in 2023, the commission said.
Also Thursday, the American Gaming Association reported that U.S. commercial gaming revenues grew for the 14th consecutive quarter across the months of April, May and June of this year as expanded gambling options including sports betting and online casino gambling apps have proliferated to more and more states. The organization said the $17.63 billion in quarterly revenue for the sector generated $3.73 billion in tax revenue for states across the country.
"While sports betting and iGaming continued to drive overall industry revenue growth in the second quarter, new brick-and-mortar property openings in Illinois, Nebraska and Virginia also led to rising traditional commercial gaming revenue," AGA Vice President of Research David Forman said. "Across the country, land-based gaming markets are seeing mixed year-over-year comparisons due to slower consumer spending economy-wide, which may continue to be a factor through the remainder of 2024."
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