Mobile betting went live in Arizona on September 9, 2021, generating a total of $32.3 million in gross gaming revenue by the end of the calendar month. No other US state has done anything similar in its maiden month of regulated sports betting.
Equally impressive is the fact that Arizona sportsbooks had a $291.2 million handle in September. This includes both online and retail sportsbooks, although online platforms were responsible for a large portion of that amount. In fact, the total amount of wagers accepted by land-based sportsbooks in Arizona was just $2.6 million the same month.
Arizona’s Mobile Betting Industry Making History
Arizona sportsbooks debut saw bettors wagering a total of $291.2m in less than one calendar month, which is the highest number of all the states that have made this gaming activity legal.
In comparison, Tennessee, the state whose sportsbooks previously held the record, had a $131.4 million handle in the first month.
The gross gaming revenue (GGR) of Arizona was $32.3 million and a big chunk of that money went into the state’s piggy bank. The state taxed the sportsbooks $392,418, as well as charged $31,293 worth of fees.
DraftKings AZ Leading the Way
The biggest winner of mobile betting legalization in Arizona is DraftKings Sportsbook. The operator accepted $97.7 million in wagers in September. That is more than one-third more than FanDuel, the operator that’s in second place.
The other six AZ sportsbooks that went live in September – BetMGM, Caesars, Barstool, Unibet, WynnBet, and TwinSpires – accounted for the rest of the handle.
Inspired by the success of those operators, other sportsbooks got on the AZ betting bandwagon in the next couple of months. The latest addition to Arizona’s betting landscape is SaharaBets, which is scheduled to launch on January 12, 2022.
