No U.S. state has ever taken more money in sports bets or reaped more in wagering tax revenue in a year than New York did in 2024.
The Empire State took a massive $22.6 billion in sports wagers last calendar year, $3.5 billion (18.4%) more than it did in 2023.
Boosted by higher betting activity on existing sportsbooks and the addition of Fanatics Sportsbook and ESPN Bet to the market during the year, that handle saw the state’s nine operators take slightly more than $2 billion in gross gaming revenue. That GGR total was up 20.9% from 2023’s $1.7 billion.
Given that no state benefits financially from sports betting like New York does, it was also a record year for the state in terms of tax revenue. The state’s 51% rate, the highest in the country, yielded more than $1 billion in direct tax takings, up 21% year-over-year. It’s the first time any state has ever taken a 10-figure sum from sports betting in a year.
New York’s handle, GGR and tax revenue numbers are all new annual U.S. records.
Those figures were completed by the state’s second-biggest month ever in terms of sports betting handle. In December, bettors in New York spent just under $2.3 billion wagering on sports online, 1.7% short of the record set two months earlier.
New York’s blistering sports betting pace doesn’t look likely to slow down anytime soon. In the first week of 2025, the New York State Gaming Commission reported a new all-time weekly handle record of more than $600 million.
FanDuel makes nearly $1 billion in GGR in New York
In the country’s biggest sports betting market, FanDuel was top of the pile in 2024.
The Flutter-owned operator took more than $9 billion in bets, handle that yielded $952.1 million in gross gaming revenue. It only gets to keep half of that, of course, but $467 million is still a huge profit for a sportsbook to make in a year from a single state.
FanDuel alone paid New York $485.6 million in sports betting tax last year.
Behind FanDuel, of course, came DraftKings, with $8.0 billion in handle and $704.8 million in GGR for the calendar year. Caesars was third ($1.8 billion, $131.1 million) ahead of BetMGM ($1.6 billion, $102.2 million).
Despite only being live in the state for 10 months of the year, Fanatics secured a top-five spot. The rapidly growing sportsbook took $1.1 billion in sports bets in New York in 2024 and earned $85 million in GGR.
BetRivers was sixth with $603.8 million in handle and $40.1 million in GGR, less than half of Fanatics’ revenue total.
In its first three months after its late-September launch in the state, ESPN Bet took $132.4 million in bets and made $8.1 million in GGR, yielding an after-tax profit of under $4 million. However, December was the PENN-owned brand’s biggest month yet in the state in terms of action, with $48.7 million in handle.
