March Madness drives New Jersey to sports betting record

New Jersey’s regulated sports betting market set a new revenue record in March thanks mainly to a certain college basketball tournament.

Figures released Friday by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) show the state’s licensed sportsbooks earned a record $31.9m in March, up from just $12.7m in February and significantly higher than the previous record of $24m set last September.

A reminder that the DGE includes ‘pending wagers’ as revenue, and since a lot of wagers would have been placed on the latter stages of the NCAA March Madness basketball schedule, which didn’t take place until April, so the March revenue figure likely got a little ‘wind assist’ here.

Regardless, betting handle hit $372.4m in March, second only to the $385m the books handled in January. Of this sum, $298.3m (80%) was wagered via digital channels, roughly the same percentage reported in each month this year. The state’s books have already handled nearly $1.1b worth of wagers through the first three months of 2019.