Marylanders now have some idea of what a full fiscal year of legal sports betting in their state looks like. However, it’s still a shadow of what the industry’s potential in their state will be.
Despite the completion of the first full fiscal year of legal wagering on sports in Maryland in June, there’s one big reason why the new fiscal year that began on July 1 will likely prove more lucrative. Regardless, Maryland’s sports betting licensees performed quite well during the 12-month period in question.
Maryland completes first full fiscal year of legal sports betting
For the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Association, fiscal years begin on July 1 and end on June 30. Accordingly, that agency just released its figures for not only June 2023 but the entire fiscal year that just ended.
In June, residents of and visitors to the state wagered more than $254.4 million. Books won about $27 million or around 10.6% of that money. After allowable deductions, sportsbooks paid more than $2.8 million to Maryland. All of those numbers represented drops from May Maryland sports betting activity.
Legal sports betting began in Maryland on an in-person basis in December 2021. Thus, FY22-23 marks the first complete fiscal year with legal options available in the state. During that time period:
- Marylanders wagered more than $2.8 billion on sporting events via licensed books
- Licensed books paid out more than $2.5 billion of that money to bettors
- Licensees also claimed more than $211.5 million in promotional play that state law allows them to deduct from their taxable revenue
- After those deductions and payouts, regulators assessed taxes on more than $168.3 million in win
- Those assessments totaled more than $25.2 million for the state
Those numbers essentially mark a starting point for Maryland’s sports betting industry moving forward. It’s extremely likely that FY23-24 will surpass those numbers. They will probably beat those figures easily, too.
Expect a significant bump in FY23-24
There’s one clear and obvious reason why revenue and taxes from Maryland sports betting should be significantly larger in the fiscal year that just began. It’s all about the apps.
Legal online sports betting in Maryland didn’t begin until Nov. 22, 2022. For that reason, the first four full months and most of the fifth month in FY22-23 only featured in-person wagering. In Maryland like in many other states, online wagering dwarfs in-person sports betting.
The current fiscal year will have the benefit of online wagering being available for all 12 months. That will include the bulk of the 2023-24 NFL regular season. For that reason, it might not be ridiculous to expect over $4 billion in wagers for the current fiscal year.
Whether the amount of money the sportsbooks win and the state receives in taxes will escalate by the same proportion remains to be seen, however. For FY22-23, sportsbooks won about 13.3% of the money they took in from bettors.
That’s an impressive figure for any 12-month period, as an industry standard for a good win rate is 10%. There’s no guarantee sportsbooks will replicate that over the course of the current fiscal year. How Marylanders fare on their early-season NFL bets will go a long way toward deciding that percentage.