Sports betting tax revenue up 35% in the US

The legalization of the sports gambling market in the United States has had a significant impact to state government’s tax coffers, with LendingTree, an online lending marketplace company, collating government data and concluding that a total of $2.5bn was contributed to tax payments to states in 2023 alone.

This marks a 34.7% jump from a year before, with 19 states posting gains of more than 10% in their overall revenue generated from taxing sports betting, along with several others, that increased their proceeds from sports betting tax by 40% or more.

To arrive at this figure, LendingTree used data provided by the US Census Bureau and has been encouraged by the immediate benefit to state coffers and public purses generated through the regulated gambling market. The company focused on several key findings that put together the full picture of what sports betting has done in terms of contributing to tax revenue.

Between 2023 and 2022, for one, the total tax contributions from sports gambling increased from $1.8bn to $2.5bn. Although New York is a fairly newly launched sports betting market, the Empire State collected $876m in tax revenue, dubbing it the "sports betting tax revenue capital of the country."

The figure was a 24.1% increase from the results the state pulled in 2022. Notable gains were made by states such as Alabama, Colorado, Virginia, and Nevada, all of which saw their tax revenue from sports gambling increase by 40% or more from 2022 to 2023. However, 12 states also registered smaller tax revenues in 2023 than they did a year before.

LendingTree also took the opportunity to petition consumers about their attitudes towards gambling. According to 44% of respondents, sports gambling ought to be legal nationwide, with only 18% disagreeing, and 38% not commenting on this particular matter.

However, nearly half of all Americans are also worrying that should sports betting increase, so would the cheating associated with undermining the games’ fairness. Already, there are broad discussions to suspend prop bets on college sports, an idea that is gathering a lot of momentum.

Major League Baseball has also broached a similar conversation, looking to possibly suspend prop bets on its own games in a proactive bid to limit the potential for foul play and undermining the game’s fairness and integrity.

The NFL has already seen numerous players receive punishments and, the NBA has handed down a lifetime ban to Jontay Porter over trying to fix prop bets.

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