Colorado Sports Betting Hits New Monthly Record of $231 Million

Colorado November Betting Numbers

The numbers for Colorado are starting to really pile on as the state saw a total sports betting handle of $231 million in the month of November. Comparing that to October, where the handle was $210 million, the state has seen exactly a 10% increase in sports betting. This is absolutely massive news considering that November was primarily all football since both the NBA and MLB championships had finished. This means that people are simply betting more and more and outpacing the natural contraction one would see from losing options.

The total revenue off of the $231 million that was placed was $18.354 million for sportsbooks, and the state saw only $793k of that revenue. Colorado continues to bring in quite a little amount of money to the state due to its extremely sportsbook-friendly laws and sports betting being rather new. Many of the bookmakers in the state are focused on client acquisition with promotions, which means that they are not bringing in the net proceeds needed for a higher tax collection.

As expected, the NFL dominated the wagers with a total handle of $88 million. The next closest was NCAA Football, which brought in $22 million. These two brought in just under half of the entire handle in the state. However, Parlays/Combinations accounted for $40 million, and there is a good chance that a lot of that was NFL or NCAA Football related. Interestingly enough, the Other category brought in $31 million, and this could be election-related bets with the presidential election happening November 2nd.

Colorado Outlook

With the NBA starting up in December, mixed with college football bowl season and the final weeks of the NFL, one would have to peg it to be another record-breaking month. With the trajectory that Colorado sports betting has taken, I would not be shocked by another 10-20% increase in the sports betting handle.

However, there seems to be the elephant in the room not being discussed, and that is the extremely poor revenue that Colorado is collecting off of these huge sports handles. The issue seems to be that sportsbooks are offering such competitive odds, with so many promotions that they are not collecting loads of revenue. However, looking at Tennessee, for example, it collected 500k in its first week of official sports betting in November. That was only off of $27.4 million wagered.

While yes, Tennessee has stricter laws and higher tax rates that may or may not cap its growth compared to Colorado, those numbers have to be bugging the people of Colorado as the state is simply not getting much out of this new revenue stream.

Some may worry that Colorado is headed down a similar path as New Jersey, where record-breaking amazing sports handles and revenue is simply not turning into the crazy impactful revenue for the state. Comparatively, states like Tennessee, Illinois, and New Hampshire have smaller handles but huge streams of revenue coming in. It has to be a give and take between good offers for players and good revenue for the state.