New Jersey’s Betting Market Slows Down in February

New Jersey’s sportsbooks posted a slowdown in their results for February, with the handle and revenue both seeing a decline. Some have suggested that the newly-launched market in New York to the market has had its say, but not everyone is sure that the Garden State’s lower results are necessarily tied to its neighbor.

Lower Sports Betting Handle Explained

New Jersey did however miss an important milestone in February. Since August 2021, the state has enjoyed at least $1 billion in total handle, but last month’s results clocked in $985.6 million. That is despite the Super Bowl. This is not entirely unexpected. Traditionally, there is a lot of betting handle on the NFL Playoffs, with many future bets placed well ahead of February on the Super Bowl game.

The hold for February stood at 3.1% or some $30.9 million of the total. This is the second problem Garden State faced. The hold of just $30.9 million is one of the lowest on record. In fact, it’s the lowest the state has seen since July 2020 when the pandemic had put the entire world of sports on hold.

So, does this mean sports fans became smarter? That depends. The Super Bowl is usually the time when the sharp bettors come out but this has not stopped sportsbooks such as DraftKings from continually enjoying much bigger hold, even though they often fall behind on other metrics, such as total wagers placed.

Looking closer at the NFL numbers, New Jersey saw only $143.7 million going on the Super Bowl in February compared to a total of $340.3 million on American football all throughout January. This just adds to the overall opinion that because of the slowdown in NBA and NFL regular games, February is just much slower in general.

Revenue Drop Amid Sustained Appetite for Sports

New Jersey, though, will be most likely bounce back hard this March as March Madness is already underway. In fact, this would be the first true test of whether New York is going to siphon off a lot of betting handle from the Garden State.

Nevertheless, Super Bowl remained a big driver of interest for the state. Basketball, though, generated a whopping $503.1 million in total wagers. Out of the total amount bet on sports throughout the Garden State, $899.6 million came out from online sportsbooks. DraftKings though claimed a smaller amount in terms of revenue than its main competitors FanDuel, Superbook, and PointsBet.