The first-ever NBA Championship for the Denver Nuggets was reason for most people in Colorado to celebrate, but not the state’s sportsbooks.
Of the $301 million in bets taken at sportsbooks in June, 18.7% were on basketball. However, that does not account for the numerous futures bets placed on the home NBA team throughout the season. Books accepted $67.5 million in wagers but paid out $68.8 million for a $1.5 million loss on the sport for the month.
Altogether, revenue for the month amounted to $9.2 million. Retail sportsbooks lost a total of $674,000 on the month, bringing down GGR and the hold percentage to a dismal 3%.
Nevada experienced a similar drop from the Las Vegas Golden Knights winning the Stanley Cup. State sportsbooks there reported a meager 2% hold after the state’s hockey team won the NHL Finals.
Colorado also struggled when it came to hockey in June with $4.5 million in accepted wagers and $5.3 million in payouts. Again, this is skewed because of how many pending future bets were paid out at the end of the season.
What is more difficult to explain but seems to always prove true in Colorado is the continued interest in table tennis betting. With a slow sports calendar, table tennis managed to be the sixth-most popular sport of the month, outpacing the end of the NHL season and MMA betting with a solid $7.8 million in handle, generating the sportsbooks a little more than $500,000 in win on the sport.
Baseball was far and away the most popular sport of the month, accounting for a third of all handle, while parlay bets represented almost $70 million of bets.
The state reported net sports betting proceeds of almost $2 million, which means operators doled out a little more than $7.2 million in tax-deductible promotional credit.
