West Virginia Sees A Spike In Revenue From Online Sportsbook

The state of West Virginia is seeing a boom in the online gambling market. Both handle and revenue are up month-over-month when comparing July to August. Online sports betting specifically saw significant increases in both month-over-month and year-over-year comparisons in the state.

West Virginia does their reporting a bit differently compared to the rest of the states in America- they report weekly numbers instead of monthly. July 1 marks the beginning of the 2022/2023 fiscal year for the West Virginia Lottery. So while the numbers may look a bit off for comparison, they are impressive nonetheless.

Month Over Month Increases

The numbers for July are for July 1 through July 30. August numbers, however, are for July 31 through September 3. This means that the fiscal August month has 35 days to measure while July has 30. 

The online gambling August revenue for West Virginia was $10.8 million. This was a 27.1% increase month-over-month from the month of July, which had $8.5 million in revenue, according to the gambling revenue report. Handle saw a slightly less significant increase where the handle saw an 18.2% increase month-over-month from $277.3 million in July versus $327 million in August. 

West Virginia is currently one of the six states to have the top online casinos. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware were early adopters of the online casino product, with Michigan and Connecticut joining the states as players in the online casino product a bit more recently.

Boosts In Online Sportsbook Betting

August saw a large increase in online sports gambling in the state of West Virginia. The total handle for sports betting saw a 35.7% increase month over month comparing August to July. The sports betting handle for August was $33.9 million, while July had a handle of $25 million. The year-over-year comparison was up 51.9%, with August 2021 having a $22.3 million handle. 

The following month of September looks to continue on this month-over-month and year-over-year increase with the start of the NFL season. The return of professional and college football marks a full season of the most popular sports betting sport there is, which will be shown in the September handle and revenue numbers.

Mobile Performance

The mobile sports betting handle for the month of August was just over $28 million, which was a 33.5% increase compared to the month of July, which had a handle of $21 million. Compared to the previous year, this August had a 69% increase in the handle, which was at $16.6 million.

Online sports betting on a mobile device has consistently been the most popular way to make an online sports bet, ever since the device became eligible to wager on in the Summer of 2019. The boost also comes with the addition of online blackjack and other top online casino games such as roulette and poker. These games were introduced in the month of July in 2020 and have given the state of West Virginia a massive increase in both handle and revenue.

Year Over Year Performance

The online sportsbook revenue continued to grow from July, with $2.6 million in revenue to August with $4.03 million in revenue. This led to a 54% increase in revenue month over month for the state. From a year-over-year point of view, the increase in revenue was almost at 100%, with 2021 bringing in roughly $2 million. 

The state of West Virginia has to be excited about the spike in revenue as the state’s share of taxes equated to 8.5% of total revenue. This means that the state collected $342,536 for the month of August. 

The month of June ended the fiscal year for 2021/2022. For the entire fiscal year of 2021/2022, the state of West Virginia had a total handle of $599.1 million from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022. This was 15.6% compared to the previous fiscal year of 2020/2021. The revenue for the 2020/2021 fiscal year was just about $45 million.