Sports Betting Handle Goes Down In Louisiana In May
Rough Gambling Month In The Bayou
Legal sports betting operators took it on the chin in Louisiana as the Louisiana May sports betting handle fell by over 9 percent to $256.6 million following a $283 handle in April.
That kind of a falloff may be expected in a month like Louisiana where the NHL postseason isn’t particularly popular and there’s no in-state MLB team to carry things along.
The New Orleans Pelicans did make the NBA playoffs but they were a quick exit which certainly contributed to a lack of betting enthusiasm on basketball.
There was also a drop in month-to-month handle from March 2024 to April 2024 from April 2024 to May 2024. To boot… because hold percentage stayed roughly the same at 13 percent, the lower overall handle resulted in decreased revenue for operators.
Even though Louisiana bettors lost (and won) on the scores and odds at essentially the same rate as they did in April, the sportsbooks took home less in profit.
While it’s still hard to make predictions by the month regarding how the sportsbooks will do in June and throughout the summer — which is typically a downtime for sports betting but is especially true in states like Louisiana where there is less interest in MLB than in, perhaps, neighboring Florida — don’t be surprised if the June handle also goes down in Louisiana and continues to drop until the NFL starts back up again in September.
Parlays Are King
One saving grace for the lackluster Louisiana May sports betting handle numbers are that parlays continue to be a huge money-maker for the sportsbooks. Of course, that isn’t especially surprising because the sportsbooks only need one of any bettor’s parlay legs to fail for them to lose (and the sportsbooks to win).
Despite this, and the odds literally being stacked against bettors profiting off parlays on the long-term, continued advertising and promotion of parlay boosts and same-game parlays has made parlay betting enormous.
In Louisiana in May, for example, parlays alone accounted for $21.3 million of profit for the sportsbooks. Straight basketball ($2.1 million), baseball ($1.8 million) or other sports such as golf and hockey ($5.4 million) paled in comparison to the kind of profit that parlays brought into the mix.
Books continue to heavily push parlays because the potential risk of a lucrative multi-leg parlay paying out is worth the almost-guaranteed profit from the many smaller parlays placed all the time.
Another great aspect of parlays is that you can bet any sports you’d like in one large bet. That’s how you get parlays with NBA and MLB futures combined, for example.
Those bets can essentially lock in profit for the sportsbooks because it’s very likely they are taking tons of action on either side of those specific bets. For the sportsbooks, parlays are win-win propositions and, to bettors, the dream of finally hitting “the big one” is more than enough of an allure to keep bringing them right back to the app.
Louisiana sports betting handle reaches $256.7m in May
The handle increased 32.6 per cent year-over-year.#UnitedStates #Louisiana #SportsBettinghttps://t.co/Ixc3WZH8NZ pic.twitter.com/Gu4ZOZQvtW
— Focus Gaming News (@FocusGamingNews) June 25, 2024
Brick-And-Mortar Had A Good Month
While the Louisiana May sports betting handle figure wasn’t good for the online sportsbooks in the state, the numbers for the state’s retail sportsbooks were actually solid. As you would expect, online betting makes up the lion’s share of the sports betting activity in Louisiana, at over 90 percent.
However, there are some in-person betting operations at casinos where bettors can walk in to place their bets.
For whatever reason, those retail outlets had a solid May. They collected $18.3 in total handle which worked out to be around 6 percent higher on a year-over-year basis as compared to May 2023.
This is part of a legitimate trend as each of the past three months have resulted in year-over-year sports betting handle growth for Louisiana’s retail sportsbook shops. Interestingly, prior to this three-month spike, the brick-and-mortar sportsbooks had been on a prolonged year-plus decline.
While it would be a bit presumptuous to say that retail sports betting is officially on the rise, per se, there is enough of a trend here to wonder why exactly online sports betting in Louisiana seems to be having growth issues while retail betting is doing better.
There probably is something to the idea that people like the experience of going to a casino and placing a bet with a real person and then having a physical ticket for their bet.
But, on the other hand, online betting is just so convenient that there’s a reason why it has thrived throughout the country. It could also just be a blip or some kind of unique-to-Louisiana situation going on but it’s still worth monitoring going forward.
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