Online Sports Betting In PA, Now Accounting For Two-Thirds Of Market

• SugarHouse Casino launched the first online sportsbook in Pennsylvania on May 28, 2019.
• Online sports betting apps accounted for almost $39 million of the $59.3 million wagered on sports in the month of July.
• FanDuel Sportsbook generated $3.3 million in handle during nine days they were operational in July.

PHILADELPHIA – Numbers don’t lie and the numbers show that sports bettors love online sportsbooks in Pennsylvania.

A revenue report provided by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) shows that online sports wagers accounted for about $39 million of the $59.3 million that was bet on sports during the month of July alone. That is nearly two-thirds of the state’s total handle and the first time that online sportsbooks in PA outperformed retail outlets in terms of handle.

This is actually something that is common in the legal sports betting industry. In New Jersey, online wagers have consistently accounted for about 80% of all money bet on sports in the state. New Jersey also has significantly more sports betting apps than Pennsylvania.

However, Pennsylvania is slowly but surely catching up. There are currently four active mobile sportsbooks in the Keystone State and more are expected to join. The ones taking in all the action now are PlaySugarHouse, BetRivers, Parx Sportsbook, and FanDuel Sportsbook.

PlaySugarHouse was the first to launch and has maintained their status as the market leader to this point. They took in a total handle of approximately $26.4 million in July and $22 million of that total was generated online.

Their retail figures should not be surprising given the fact that the casino is located in Philadelphia, PA, the most populated city in the state. But given the fact that sports bettors can register and use the app from anywhere in the state speaks volumes as to the power of first-mover advantage in the industry.

BetRivers is provided by Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh, but it is operated by the same company as SugarHouse Casino, Rush Street Interactive.

The Rivers Sportsbook holds a bit of a monopoly in the Pittsburgh area as far as retail sports betting parlors go. They have also shown a strong presence in the online PA sports wagering market having generated close to $10 million in handle through BetRivers.

Parx Casino, the largest casino in the state in terms of revenue, did not see their online sportsbook perform nearly as well as their competitors in July. The casino giant only took in about $3.6 million in online handle for the whole month.

A big reason may have come from the fact that the Parx Sportsbook app has not been available on the Apple App Store until earlier this month.

To contrast that, FanDuel Sportsbook generated $3.3 million in online handle in just nine days of operation during July. To add to that staggering comparison, several of those days were just testing days before given the final green light by the PGCB.

The app was available for iPhone users to download from the app store at the time of its launch.

As more casinos in PA begin to launch mobile sportsbooks, the majority of the total sports betting handle in the state is only expected to go more towards those outlets.

Our state-by-state sports betting revenue tracker also shows that with football season coming, you can expect more sports betting revenue records to be shattered this year in PA.

News tags: BetRivers | FanDuel Sportsbook | New Jersey | Parx Sportsbook | Pennsylvania | Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board | Philadelphia | PlaySugarHouse