Indiana Sports Betting Tops $300M In March Handle
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After the usual February dip, Indiana topped $300M in bets during the month of March. With March Madness being in their own backyard, there was $316M placed in wagers. Most of that went towards basketball. Sportsbooks saw a 55% increase from February, which is usually the low point of the year given football is over and there are breaks in other sports. Indiana also topped a 300% increase from March 2020, but given that was the beginning of the pandemic it makes a lot of sense. Indiana has had a strong showing since then, where they had a terrific January.
Online Betting Continues To Be The Popular Choice
Indiana has had a stable online betting market since opening. There have been few restrictions for signing up, where neighboring state Illinois has recently been bouncing back and forth with online registrations. Despite other states around them also having online betting, Indiana has held their own. 88% of their handle this month was online, which was around the same mark last month.
If Illinois ever foolishly goes into in-person registration, Indiana might see a small bump. Given the pandemic and frigid temps over the winter months, online betting just makes the most sense. New York lost plenty of revenue to New Jersey as they are finally getting around to mobile betting.
FanDuel & DraftKings Lead Sportsbooks
DraftKings had back-to-back $100M+ handles over the last two months. They saw $111M in March handle, which was up from $107M. FanDuel had $92M in bets placed, which was up from $71M in February. This continues to be a constant in most states as the two have really developed a stronghold on the market.
Basketball continues to be the highest-handled sport in Indiana. This is a bit surprising even though Indiana is a massive basketball state. Year-to-date they have handled $634M, where football is at $460M. However, there is a $546M handle for parlays, which will likely include quite a bit of football. Baseball has seen $104M, which is the fewest. Other sports like hockey, golf, tennis, etc have seen $426M.
March Madness was a massive win for Indiana as a majority of March bets were for college basketball. This isn’t a big surprise with NFL off the board, and baseball not getting started until late March. April will be an interesting follow up with the NBA regular season coming close to an end and the Masters also in the middle of the month.
