The Kansas City Chiefs marched through the NFL playoffs in January, with legal sports betting operators taking it on the chin, and January may also be a preview for February’s Super Bowl-related betting results.
The Kansas Lottery announced yesterday that the state’s retail and online sports betting sites took in $206.1 million in wagers in January, a 12% monthly jump from the $181.9 million generated in December.
While Kansas sports betting was more popular to start 2023, the sportsbooks did not reap much of the benefit, generating just $7.2 million in revenue — a steep decline (30.1%) from the previous month — for a brutal 3.49% hold rate.
Mobile operators, which generated 95.4% of the wagers, posted just over $7 million in revenue. That's good for a hold percentage of 3.58%, which is significantly lower than December's mobile win rate of 5.6%.
Retail sportsbooks? Did even worse: Kansas has four brick-and-mortar operators and the Kansas Star casino was the only one to make a profit, as the $9.4 million in handle, $145K in revenue, and 1.5% hold were massive drops from December's figures ($10.8 million handle, $788K revenue, 7.3% hold).
Not surprising that as sportsbooks saw a drop in profits... so too did the state coffers. January’s tax bill fell to $598,745, which is a 40% hit compared to December's payments to the state.
Promos and operator popularity
DraftKings was the most popular sportsbook in the Sunflower State, with $78.2 million in wagers, followed closely by FanDuel ($64.6 million) and then a distant third was BetMGM ($25.1 million).
The state’s other three operators — Barstool ($20.1 million), Caesars ($15.1 million), and PointsBet ($2.6 million) — brought up the bottom half.
For the sportsbooks willing to offer promos, there was a correlation between customer offerings and monthly handle on their websites.
In January, the order was identical: DraftKings led operators in promo deductions with $2.9 million... and PointsBet was at the bottom with $124,097 in deductions.
