Cellular sports activities betting turns into New York’s second-largest gaming income stream

A report Wednesday from the N.Y. Comptroller’s Office said that cell sports activities betting, whereas “not as popular as the state lottery,” is now the “second strongest gaming revenue stream” the state has, in accordance with Steve Hughes of NEWSDAY. In FY2026, which ran from April 2025 by March, it collected greater than $5.1B in gaming income, a soar of $1.3B from a decade in the past. Those figures embrace “lottery tickets and video lottery terminals at horse racing tracks, as well as casinos.” The progress has been “driven almost entirely by the growth in collections from mobile sports wagering” since its legalization in 2022, rising from $727.4M in FY2023 to $1.3B in FY26, per to the report. New Yorkers have wagered $91.2B on cell sports activities bets because it turned authorized, leading to $8.3B in gross gaming income, the distinction between what gaming platforms soak up from bets and pay out on profitable ones. The report famous that the state has “more than 7.2 million unique sports betting accounts.” The comptroller’s workplace mentioned that the overwhelming majority of these bettors “are young, between the ages of 21 and 44, with 40% being 21 to 35 years old.” The hottest sport to wager on “is basketball,” with greater than $9B wagered in 2025. Football was the “second most popular sport,” with over $5B in bets positioned, “followed by baseball, tennis and soccer” (NEWSDAY, 9/16).

LESS CASINOS: In N.Y., Carl Campanile wrote the expansion of cell sports activities betting “has come at the expense of in person-sports wagering in the state’s commercial casinos (Rivers, Del Lago, Tioga Downs and Resorts World Catskills), which are taxed at a significantly lower 10% rate.” Gaming income from in-person sports activities wagering totaled $69M since 2019, “less than 1% of the total from mobile sports wagering.” Meanwhile, the report highlighted the “emergence of the less regulated but ballooning prediction markets, with most trading focused on sporting events” (N.Y. POST, 9/16).

KNICKS WIN: Hughes in a separate piece wrote “because apparently so many bet on their home state Knicks,” the underdogs who upset the Spurs within the NBA Finals, gross gaming income for betting platforms posted a $14.4M loss. That is the quantity betting platforms soak up after paying out profitable bets (NEWSDAY, 9/16).