Sports betting proceeds from Colorado in May 2022 showed a significant rise in online betting when compared with retail. Online sports betting turned in a revenue of $26.8m, up 79.7% year-on-year in comparison with retail sports betting, which turned over $0.7m – a 27% increase.
This is a disparity of over 50% in revenue increase, and highlights how online betting is continuing to surpass brick-and-mortar sports betting in the Centennial State. The net sports betting proceeds (NSBP) of online betting ran to $16.3m when compared to retail’s NSBP display of $258,949.
Basketball the season’s most popular betting sport in Colorado, taking up 28.3% off all wagers placed compared to the second most popular sport, baseball, which amounts to 25.3% of wagers. Betting on basketball highlighted just how large a gap there was between online and retail: players wagered $100.6m online compared to $1.3m in retail wagers.
The numbers of both sectors of betting were still much improved on from last year, showing a substantial increase from the cumulative total of $15.1m gross gaming revenue (GGR) in May 2021. The $27.1m seen this May is evidence of how much the industry has grown in the last year.
Although GGR cannot be described as pure profits, it is a key metric used in sports betting as it reflects the difference between how much players wager versus how much they win. Another key metric (total sports betting handle) also gave much hope to operators, with a 44.7% year-on-year increase for a $360m yield.
March Madness helped fuel Colorado’s second-best total sports betting handle this year ($505.6m), but May’s numbers were never expected to touch this figure. The data, released by Colorado’s Department of Revenue, will still be a cause for optimism for the state’s betting industry.
