It takes the Arizona Department of Gaming a long time to figure out the sports betting numbers each month, and the state is always a few months behind. The ADG just recently announced the February sports betting totals, and the Super Bowl did treat the market extremely well.
The total sports betting handle for the month of February was $609 million, and the big game provided plenty of action. Arizona became the first state with legal sports betting to host the Super Bowl, and bettors flocked to the sportsbooks.
FanDuel Sportsbook had a huge month in February as it posted a total sports betting handle of $218.9 million. This was the second-largest monthly total for any operator after DraftKings went up over $230 million in March 2022.
Arizona was the only state to post top-ten figures to also see the overall betting handle increase from January to February. Total sports betting went up over three percent from the first month of the year to February, and most other states saw a steep decline.
The massive sports betting handle total for Arizona in February actually placed it ahead of Pennsylvania for the month. Arizona has always been a market that doesn’t always follow the trend, but the Super Bowl helped to boost the numbers this year.
Sportsbooks Take a Slight Hit
Despite the nice jump in the overall sports betting handle, operators in the state didn’t have as much success as in January. The total revenue for the month was just $35.4 million, and that was a decrease of more than 25% from the first month of the year.
Sports bettors in the state of Arizona did a great job of handicapping the Super Bowl as it kept the hold rate to less than 6% in the state. There were 29 states that had legal sports betting launched in February 2023, and only three states recorded a worse hold rate.
Arizona was able to collect $1.6 billion in tax dollars from sports betting, and that’s a solid number. 2023 has started off in a much bigger way then what was recorded in 2022, and that should bode well for the rest of the year.
Local Sportsbook Attracting Bets
It should come as no surprise that FanDuel Sportsbook continues to put up the biggest numbers in Arizona and that DraftKings has been in second place. BetMGM and Caesars are the other two names in the top five, but that is where things start to get interesting.
Desert Diamond is a local sportsbook in the state of Arizona, and it has emerged as an attractive option for bettors. For the month of February, Desert Diamond nearly had a total sports betting handle of $44 million.
Sportsbooks in Arizona are still spending a ton of money on promotions, and that continues to hurt the overall numbers for the state.
State Spends Money on Problem Gambling
The ADG has also released its report from the last fiscal year, and there was one thing that jumped off the page right away. The Division of Problem Gambling spent more than $1 million during the previous fiscal year to try to help bettors out.
Over 800 different people were treated for problem gambling last year, and there were over 300 new people that enrolled to be self-excluded. It’s good that these bettors have recognized that they have an issue, but problem gambling is never a good issue.
