00:00We're getting some interesting numbers here from sportsbooks in terms of revenue in 2025. Sam,
00:06you know, the same story that we have been telling for a long period of time,
00:09not just prediction markets, but you know, the other part of this is that states like
00:13California and Texas and Minnesota and Georgia just aren't legalizing sports betting. It's a
00:18very quiet year in 25 and 26 seems to be no different. But the sportsbooks themselves
00:24seem to be doing just fine. So I'd love that explanation if you don't mind.
00:30Yeah, good setup, Craig, with naming the number of states that have not legalized sports betting.
00:35It's getting easy to remember which ones those are because we have fewer and fewer of them. And
00:40it's really just the same ones, which we'll get into in a little bit. But the U.S. sportsbooks
00:45in 2025 had a record nearly $17 billion in revenue. Like you mentioned, the number keeps going up. In
00:53fact, it went up about 23 percent from the year earlier. So revenue isn't exactly the profit that
00:59sportsbooks are keeping. You know, they still have a lot of costs. They have to pay people, have to pay
01:03taxes. But it's essentially the money that they keep after they pay out all the bets. So that was up
01:09about, you know, like a quarter of what it was from the year before. But really interesting, I think for
01:13the
01:13first time ever, the American Gaming Association, which reports all this stuff, they did not include
01:19Handel in their report for the first time ever. They do this annual report. And that comes as, you know,
01:26separate data that we track shows that Handel has really been slowing. You know, Handel is the total amount of
01:32money that people are betting. You know, like you mentioned, no new states going online. It's going to be hard
01:38to
01:38keep growing that number. People aren't going to always be betting more and more. We actually have some data that
01:43indicates Handel grew about 11 percent during the year. So separate from what the AGA reported. But
01:49if you match that up with the revenue, it shows that the revenue is outpacing the Handel growth,
01:54like about by double. So essentially, people are not betting more and more. It's more money they're
02:00losing. And that comes as obviously same game parlays, which you can never you can never kind of
02:07undersell how much growth that continues to have and how much that continues to help sportsbooks
02:12make more money out of their customers. Live betting has taken off more, which again is higher margin
02:18bets for the sportsbook as well. And then really importantly, I think the story here is also
02:22NFL season was really good for the sportsbooks, which comes after last year. They had one of their worst
02:28NFL seasons ever on record. So that kind of gives us a little bit of a hint as to why
02:34perhaps they're
02:35making so much more revenue. And that growth is really outpacing the actual Handel growth. But with
02:41Handel in general, that's been a concern among the industry as of late. There's actually some data
02:46that indicates that betting is down for the first time ever or was down in the first quarter of the
02:53year about 2% from the year before, which is a big change. Because for years, we've talked about
02:58double digit growth every quarter, that's going to be something the industry really has to kind of
03:03get a hold of or take the reins of going forward throughout the rest of the year, you definitely don't
03:08want to have, you know, betting going in the opposite direction. Once the World Cup comes around
03:12this summer, and then once football season comes around in the fall, that'll always sneak up on us
03:17like it does. The sportsbooks don't want to make sure that it doesn't sneak up on them and that
03:21they'll obviously be growing their handle. So I'm really interested to see how that story kind of
03:25plays out as well. Meanwhile, taxes are up even more than revenue as comes a lot of states have
03:30increased taxes as well. We've talked about Illinois with their huge tax increase. Now a number of other
03:36states as well. New York, I believe is considering something Maryland, New Jersey, all passed similar
03:41tax increases last year. So we'll see if those taxes keep going up as states keep passing more taxes or
03:46like the industry likes to say that perhaps that might, you know, help the black market and drive
03:51activity offshore. But yeah, it's an interesting report to kind of dig your teeth into. I would
03:56definitely encourage everyone to take a look at LegalSportsReport.com and check it out.
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