Two Western States Continue Impressive Legal Sports Betting Runs

Dave Schwab Sports Betting Expert

3 minute read

New York has been shattering records for legal sports betting since early January. This has only drawn more attention to the East Coast as the center of the universe in the legal US sports betting industry.

As a testament to the strength of the industry as a whole, both Arizona and Colorado have been posting some pretty impressive numbers on their own. Arizona has offered legal sports betting since September of 2021. Colorado first went live with both retail and online sports betting in May of 2020.

The Arizona Department of Gaming is a bit behind the times when it comes to reporting monthly gaming numbers. However, the results were worth the wait with a $563.7 million sports betting handle this past January. This figure set a new monthly record for the state.

December’s sports betting handle came in at $499.2 million to end 2021 on a high note.

Arizona now has the distinction of being the ninth state in the legal US market to pass the half-billion mark in monthly sports betting volume. Heavyweights such as New York, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania are also on that list.

If just five months with legal retail and online sportsbooks, Arizona has also surpassed the $2 billion mark in total betting volume. This was the 12^th state to accomplish that feat.

A total of 12 mobile sportsbook operators were live in the state heading into 2022. Along with a few retail sportsbooks, the total gross revenue from legal sports betting in Arizona reached $40.4 million in January. This reflects a five percent increase from December’s $38.6 million total.

The legal sports betting market in Colorado has been rolling as well. Since going live almost two years ago, the total betting handle in the state through February of this year has topped $6 billion. This year is off to a fast start with $573.7 million in volume during January. The sports betting handle for February was $440.5 million.

February’s betting handle reflected a 65.3% increase from the same month last year. Even more impressive was gross revenue coming in 87.7% higher than February of 2021. While football drove January’s betting handle, basketball accounted for half of the sports bets placed the following month.

With March Madness just coming to a close, last month’s numbers should be as equally impressive in both of these major western sports betting markets.

Following the trends from the east, FanDuel, DraftKings and BetMGM continue to dominate the western marketplace in terms of share. However, Caesars Sportsbooks has been making some major inroads all across the legal US footprint over the past few months.

Written by Dave Schwab, our US Sports Betting Industry Expert.

The featured image for this post was sourced on Unsplash by Michael Discenza.

Dave Schwab

Dave Schwab has been covering the sports betting industry for the past 12 years as the main focus of his specialty marketing company for online content. This endeavor followed a previous career in the field of sales and marketing in the wholesaling sector.Most of his weekly pieces focus on the rapidly expanding legal US sports betting industry. However, he still does extensive work covering betting angles that can provide a competitive edge to avid players. Dave believes that it is always a challenge to take past results and current form to try and correctly determine a future result. Sports brings out the unpredictability in what should be a fairly predictable outcome based on the stats, facts and recent trends in a particular matchup. More from Dave Schwab