Colorado continued its impressive trend, notching the second-highest monthly handle ever — for the second straight month — since it launched legal sports betting.
Colorado's Department of Revenue announced yesterday that the state's retail and online sports betting sites brought in $552.6 million in wagers for the month, just shy of the record $573.7 million in January 2021, and a 4.9% jump from October’s $526.6 million handle. November’s figures also represented a 16.2% increase year-over-year from the same month in 2021.
The November Gross Gaming Revenue for Colorado sports betting was $37.6 million, and taxwise, operators paid $2.6 million in taxes to the state’s Water Implementation Cash Fund. That represented a 10.8% improvement over October, despite a slight downtick in win rate (from 6.9% to 6.8%).
Basketball overtakes football in handle
We don’t know if it was the Broncos' underwhelming season, or the Nuggets’ impressive start, but the popularity of basketball in November was clearly evident as Colorado bettors wagered more on hoops during the month.
Specifically, 25.7% of the total handle came from professional basketball, usurping the NFL, which accounted for 24.5% of all wagers. October, by comparison, had football in first place at 32% and basketball second at 16.3%. College football (8.7%), college basketball (7/1%), and soccer (5.0%) rounded out November’s Top 5 for sports.
Parlays took a slight dip in the month, dropping from 17.5% of wagers to 16.6%.
The most profitable sports for retail bettors were hockey and tennis, while online bettors made their money in MMA. Baseball was the only sport where both types of bettors were profitable, winning $6.6 million from just $4.6 million in total wagers, as 99.2% of all money wagered in November came via mobile app.
