SportsHandle and friends deliver another round-up of the week’s big developments in US sports betting.

Illinois Sports Betting Handle Surges To Nearly $140M In August

The state of Illinois began to flex its sports betting muscles in August, with its six retail sportsbooks and three online platforms generating a combined handle of nearly $140 million according to the Illinois Gaming Board.

The $139.6 million more than doubled the combined $61.7 million handle the IGB reported that covered the months of March, June, and July in its first report. BetRivers (Rivers Casino) represented an overwhelming portion of both the retail and online handle, generating more than $11.3 million for in-person wagering and $106.3 million via online wagering.

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Want To Save Money Betting On NFL? Wait For Sundays With BetRiver, Barstool

The 10% house vig for sports wagering has been the standard since time immemorial, but savvy Pennsylvania bettors can routinely do better than that this fall.

That 10% — the -110 that shows up when betting on an NFL point spread or points total — provides a bookmaker a 4.54% hold percentage when balancing the wagers on both sides.

Knowledgeable handicappers know that equates to the requirement that — all else being equal, like no promotional credits to take advantage of — they succeed on 52.38% of their bets to break even.

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Buy Local! Tennessee Action 24/7 Prepping To Take On ‘Big Guys’ In Sports Betting

It would be fair to say that Tina Hodges does not consider herself a sports betting aficionado. But she does consider herself an expert on Tennessee and digital analytics. And her expertise on those two subjects make her confident that her latest venture, Tennessee Action 24/7, will be a success.

“Most people might not think of consumer lending as a digital analytics company,” Hodges, the CEO and Co-Founder of Tennessee Action 24/7, told TNBets.com. “But that’s what it has become. It’s about customer acquisition, risk analytics … so gaming online is very, very similar. The overlap is very, very strong. For me, it just seemed like a really natural overlap from the two types of businesses.”

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GAN Inks 10-Year Michigan iGaming And Mobile Sports Betting Deal With Wynn Resorts

London-based mobile gambling software company GAN announced Monday that it had entered a 10-year partnership with Wynn Resorts to provide online casino gaming and sports betting in Michigan.

According to a statement released by GAN, the companies expect to launch Wynn online in Michigan by November — provided that state government can complete the regulatory rulemaking process and begin approving licenses for digital betting platforms by then. The Michigan Gaming Control Board has cited November as its target date to launch mobile betting, although the board’s previous estimates pegged early 2021 as a potential rollout date.

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Welcome To The Parlay Party: Colorado Sports Bettors Show Proclivity For Risk

Less than seven months since the launch of legalized sports betting in Colorado, parlays have become all the rage in the Centennial State.

Peruse a list of notable payouts during the unprecedented fall sports calendar of 2020 and you will come across a host of creative wagers. When the Denver Nuggets outlasted the Utah Jazz in Game 7 of the Western Conference Playoffs first round, a Colorado bettor turned a $10 ticket into a win of $11,094, after hitting a 5-leg Same Game Parlay at FanDuel. Four days later, on Sept. 5, another FanDuel bettor pulled off a more impressive feat when his $20, 11-leg parlay from Game 4 of the Celtics-Raptors series cashed for $10,5050.

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DraftKings Intends To Raise $1 Billion Through Offering As Customer Engagement Soars In Third Quarter

Bolstered by a unique sports calendar with overlapping seasons for all four major U.S. sports, DraftKings experienced a surge in user engagement over the previous three months, according to the company’s preliminary financial results for the third quarter of 2020.

For the three-month period ended Sept. 30, DraftKings expects a metric that tracks the company’s monthly unique players (MUPs) to increase 64% year-over-year to 1.02 million. At the same time, DraftKings anticipates that its online sports betting handle soared 460% from the third quarter of 2019, as the NBA and NHL staged their respective postseasons in September for the first time on record due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The unprecedented nature of the sports calendar impacted the overall handle in a manner that may not be representative of the company’s financial performance in normal periods, DraftKings noted in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC released on Monday).

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