New York Sports Betting Revenue Spiked Again in 2025
Someday, it is inevitable that New York State’s monthly and yearly sports betting handle and revenue figures will reach "market maturity" - meaning that the days of double-digit growth percentages will come to an end.
But a robust set of fall of 2025 figures just released by the New York State Gaming Commission offers little to suggest that the boom will be fading anytime soon.
Just one month after a record-breaking November for sportsbooks that featured a combined $280.6 million in gross gaming revenue off $2.6 billion in wagers, state regulators have reported December figures of a nearly-equally impressive $259.7 million in revenue on $2.4 billion in handle.
The last three months of 2025 each produced more than $200 million taken in by sportsbooks - the first time that has happened since such legal online wagering launched in the state in the first week of 2022.
Overall, $26.3 billion was bet legally in New York in 2025, with $2.6 billion in revenue going to the sportsbooks.
FanDuel - the biggest sportsbook in the biggest U.S. sports betting state
The established market leader in the Empire State is FanDuel, with nearly $132 million in revenue in November followed by more than $120 million in December. Those big numbers allowed FanDuel - at $1.1 billion in 2025 - to make history as the first "billion-dollar sportsbook" on revenue derived from a single state in a single year.
BetMGM recorded a mixed bag of results in December, placing third in the market with what for the sportsbook was a record-high $259.1 million in handle – but with just $13.2 million in revenue.
That "hold percentage" of around 5% was about half of what the state's sportsbooks collectively held in 2025. Relative newcomer Fanatics - $18.7 million revenue on $205.5 million wagered - and traditional casino giant Caesars - $14.6 million in revenue, $152.8 million in bets placed - had more typically favorable results versus their consumers.
A review of the 2025 overall figures for national leader New York's sportsbooks reflects the typical monthly fluctuations as the sports calendar changes from month to month.
The five largest betting handle months for the state's sportsbooks in 2025 were, in order: October, November, January, March, and December. This reflects the wildly-popular college and professional American football main months, as well as the "March Madness" peak of college basketball interest.
July, and then June, were the two slowest months, with little to no basketball games played along with a football-free summer.
Will ESPN's new sports betting name be successful?
One of the top stories to be followed in New York State sports betting in 2026 will be the change in brand name of ESPN Bet to theScore Bet, which had its first full month in the state with the new name in December.
The initial numbers were a little discouraging, as the $42.5 million betting handle in the final month dipped more than 20% off ESPN Bet's wager total in its final weeks in November.
Another set of numbers that will be worth looking over is whether the three lagging sportsbooks - Bally Bet, Rush Street Interactive, and Resorts World Bet - will make enough gains for each to keep doing business in the high-tax state.
Since New York hits each sportsbook with a 51% tax on its revenue, that means that more than $1 billion was collected by the state - with nearly all of the money going to funding state education programs.
As a contrast, neighboring New Jersey - a smaller state but one with a long history of outsized interest in gambling by its residents - collected around $200 million in taxes from its sportsbook operators last year. The number is much smaller in large part because New Jersey sportsbooks turn over less than half as much of their revenue to the state as do their New York counterparts.
However, New Jersey in 2025 also took in another half-billion dollars from taxing its online casino gaming industry. If New York ever approves such gambling – and a new bill to do so has just been introduced yet again - it's not difficult to imagine the state collecting well over $2 billion annually from taxing those businesses.
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