July’s sports betting volume in 2018, 2019, and now 2021 prove this month is the slowest of the year. Despite the slowdown, Illinois remained the third state in terms of betting volume, surpassed only by New Jersey ($578.7m) and Nevada ($409.9m).
Baseball was the most bet-on sport for the first time this year, drawing $120m in July. The NBA Finals generated $42.5m in basketball handle; parlay betting was worth $79.7m, tennis $43.9m and soccer $34.1m.
July’s launch of the Olympics betting in the US did not seem to have drawn widespread interest in Illinois, as the state did not report wagers specific to the sports events that occurred in Japan.
Eric Ramsey, Analyst for the PlayUSA network, explained the lack of interest in the Olympics: “With events held in the middle of the night in many cases and sports that are a bit unfamiliar to bettors, the Olympics did not appear to draw a lot of wagering.
“In the end, the traditional team sports are still by far the largest draw for bettors, which is why football is so important for sportsbooks.”
Most of July’s wagering was online, as $351.4m out of the $369m (95,2%) came from online betting.
According to reports, DraftKings recorded the most waggers in July ($122.7m), FanDuel followed with $118.5m, BetRivers was next with $68m, PointsBet recorded $28.5m in wagers, Barstool $23.5m, Caesars by WilliamHill reported wagers of $5.3m, Argosy of $1.7m and Hollywood Joliet and Par-A-Dice had less than $1m combined in wagers.
