Massachusetts Hits Record Gambling Income in Dec '21 Finale
Transcript
00:00 Okay, so let's start off with Massachusetts and there's been look a lot of shifting around
00:09 there. We know that, you know, Barstool Sportsbook is no more. It became ESPN bet. That's where
00:13 it originated. Certainly DraftKings. I know in Massachusetts, you know, has had different
00:18 things happening there as well. We got some numbers in here from the final quarter of
00:22 the year and I can imagine with football season happening, despite the fact that Patriots
00:28 have struggled quite a bit, people in that area certainly love to wager. What did the
00:31 numbers show? Yeah, another positive month to close out the year in Massachusetts. Record
00:39 handle $658.7 million bet there in December and also record revenue. The Sportsbooks won
00:49 $62.2 million. Their most profitable month there since sports wagering launched towards
01:00 the beginning of the year. Total handle for the year $4.97 billion, just shy of that $5
01:10 billion mark. And I feel like it's pretty safe to assume that they would have surpassed
01:15 that $5 billion mark had they launched on January 1st, for example. You know, as we
01:22 know that they didn't launch the online wagering there until the early parts of March ahead
01:28 of the NCAA basketball tournament. So you factor in, you know, a missed opportunity
01:34 there with, you know, the first two and a half months of the year, you know, left a
01:39 little bit of money on the table, but still all things considered a very positive way
01:46 to round out the year in Massachusetts. A couple of interesting notes, like you said
01:51 in the lead in there, Craig, DraftKings, the hometown Boston-based sportsbook, they're
02:00 number one there as they have been from the start. And obviously, you know, being based
02:05 in the state's biggest city, you'd want to make a splash and kind of assert yourself.
02:13 And they certainly did. Though I will say what I found interesting over the last couple
02:18 of months in Massachusetts, we've seen the handle share for DraftKings drop, albeit,
02:27 you know, slightly, they still maintain about 50% of handle month over month there. But
02:33 it has declined a little bit since September. If you go back to September, they had 58%
02:40 of the mobile handle did DraftKings. October 55%, November 50%. And then in December to
02:49 close out the year 49%. So slowly kind of ticking downward there. And you know, of course,
02:58 these markets can be can be a bit volatile from from month to month. I don't know that
03:02 there's necessarily a ton of information to be gleaned from that, though. We did see,
03:07 too, like you mentioned, ESPN bet come into the market halfway through November. And what
03:14 they did in December was a bit of a positive increase from what they did in November. Their
03:21 handle share was up near 8%, up from about 6 in November. So again, like we've talked
03:28 about more, more records falling in in certain states. And it'll be interesting to to see
03:35 what sort of staying power ESPN bet has as you know, we get into the new year here, January,
03:43 February, March, we might see some of those promo dollars wear out for them. And it'll
03:47 be interesting to see if those customers do in fact stick around.
03:51 Thanks for watching.
03:52 Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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