United States: Sports Betting Industry is on the Rise

(15 April 2021) Since 2018, when US states were given the power to legalize sports betting, the annual revenue of the sports betting industry has increased by five times — from $0.3 billion in 2018 to $1.5 billion in 2020 according to data from SportsHandle. The COVID-19 pandemic undermined revenue growth in early 2020, but the industry had already recovered by September, largely due to the adoption of online betting.

• As of today, 20 US states have already launched online or retail legal sports betting, several other states have legalised the sports betting but not launched it yet and many states are in the first stages of considering legal sports betting. Experts estimate that if sports betting is legalised and launched in all 50 states, industry revenue will increase to around $20 billion a year.

Some US state governments and sports leagues see sports betting as a good opportunity to increase tax revenues and profits in a subdued post-pandemic economy — one which stimulates the cooperation between sports leagues and gambling operators as well as the rise of new startups providing online betting services.