Driven by its first month of NFL betting, North Carolina’s online sports betting hit near-record levels in September 2024 as the state continues to blow expectations out of the water.
The North Carolina Lottery Commission reported $575.4 million in total online sports betting handle last month. That is the third-highest total the Tar Heel State has seen since launching online sports betting in March, behind March and April’s totals.
As one would expect, betting volume surged from a quiet summer period. September’s sports betting handle was up around 55% from August.
September was the second-best month of North Carolina’s nascent online sports betting market in terms of gross revenue. In the third month of the new fiscal year, operators took $70.1 million, more than double August’s total of $33.8 million and almost as much as July and August combined ($76.0 million).
Operators’ hold for the month was 13.0%, again the second-highest on record behind April, when it hit 16.2%.
Even allowing for the fact that promotional credits paid out in September were nearly three times as high as they were in each of July and August, as sportsbooks went all-out to capture users ahead of the new football season, North Carolina’s online sports betting tax revenue doubled month over month to eclipse $12 million.
North Carolina obliterating modest expectations
It all means that the state is currently far exceeding the expectations for online sports betting that were laid out around the time of legalization.
Legislators had projected that the state’s 18% tax rate could yield $8.5 million in sports betting tax revenue for fiscal year 2024. From March through June 2024, the actual realized total was $49.5 million. For FY 2025, the estimate was $53 million; after three months, the state has already reaped around half of that total.
All-time, the state’s eight licensed online sportsbooks — bet365, BetMGM, Caesars, DraftKings, ESPN Bet, FanDuel, Fanatics and Underdog — have already taken a combined total of more than $3.5 billion in bets since March.