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The Louisiana Gaming Control Board reported monthly record gross sports wagering income of $56.5 million for December. At $377 million, the Pelican State also achieved a record-breaking monthly handle, marking the third consecutive month that gamblers have pushed the bar. Handle increased by 5.8% over the $356.5 million wagered in November and by 48.3% over the last month of 2022. The ten mobile betting applications available in Louisiana accounted for over $345 million of those bets, which is also an all-time high.
The total amount handled in Louisiana has topped $5 billion, with $1.04 billion in wagers accepted in the last three months of 2023 accounting for 19.8% of that total. Parlays were a big winner for the sportsbooks in December. It’s hard to say where bettors went wrong with parlays in December, but Louisiana is a prime illustration of the national trend in which the house closed out 2023 winning with parlays.
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In comparison to other states, it also seems plausible to believe that the win percentage on parlays easily exceeded 20 percent, especially considering that December’s income more than tripled the $13.7 million reported for November. In December, sports betting providers in Maryland took home $48.5 million out of a $254.8 million handle, representing a 19.1% hold. Louisiana’s parlay handle would account for 45.5% of its total handle in a hypothetical like-for-like comparison. If that were the case, $171.6 million in multi-leg betting would have resulted in a 25.2% victory percentage for Louisiana bookmakers.
However, large parlay revenue figures are not unprecedented in the Bayou. Operators have won at least $18 million from those bets nine times in the previous fifteen months. Operators’ full-year parlay revenue of $219.2 million increased by $67.5 million, or 44.5 percent, over 2022. Revenue skyrocketed as a result of all those parlay wins, with total winnings reaching $366.7 million, up 71.6 percent from the previous year. Revenue easily outpaced the 26 percent increase in handle to $2.9 billion as the win rate increased by nearly 3.4 percentage points to 12.6 percent.
While year-over-year promotional spend grew just $7.2 million to $32.6 million, adjusted gross revenue soared 77.4 percent to $334.1 million. Although handle and revenue statistics by operator are not provided by the LGCB, it seems that some operators were reserving their energy for the start of 2024, which would coincide with the NFL playoffs, Super Bowl LVIII, and the NCAA Tournament. When compared to the $9.9 million in November, when bet365 and ESPN BET began to take action, the $690,000 expenditure in December represented a 93% decrease.
Despite handle heading in the opposite direction and down 14.5 percent to $293.1 million, retail sportsbooks managed to scrape out a tiny year-over-year increase, with $35.8 million in revenue up 4.8 percent from 2022. The 18 physical locations’ cumulative hold percentage for the year was 12.2 percent, which was 2.25 percentage points higher than in 2022.
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