New York Online Sports Betting Handle Jumps as Tight Hold Lifts July Tax Revenue Past $109 Million

New York’s online sportsbooks posted their best month of the year in July, as a sharp swing in hold rates pushed handle, revenue, and state tax collections all higher at once. Bettors wagered $1.88 billion through the state’s licensed mobile operators, and books kept $214.4 million of it, according to figures released August 7 by the New York State Gaming Commission.

The headline number was the hold rate: New York sportsbooks won at an 11.4% clip in July, more than double the rate they managed in June, when a string of favorable outcomes for bettors hammered operator margins. That reversal alone accounts for most of the month-over-month jump in gross gaming revenue, since total handle stayed roughly in line with recent months.

DraftKings Leads, but theScore Bet Runs Coldest

DraftKings remained the dominant player in the market by a wide margin, taking in $661.5 million in handle for the month. Its hold, however, was a relatively modest 10.3%, translating to $72.9 million in revenue. That’s a reminder that raw handle share and revenue share don’t always move together in a market where operators are competing hard on DraftKings promo code offers and other incentives to win volume.

theScore Bet posted the lowest hold in the state at 8%, turning $30.8 million in handle into $2.5 million in win. Fanatics Sportsbook and the remaining licensed operators combined for $273.5 million in handle and $25.8 million in win, an average hold of 9.4% across that group — still below the market-wide 11.4% figure, underscoring how much DraftKings’ relatively low hold pulled the overall number down and how strong some of the smaller operators’ margins were by comparison.

Tax Revenue Climbs Past $725 Million for the Year

New York taxes online sports betting revenue at 51%, the highest rate in the country alongside New Hampshire, with the proceeds directed largely to public education funding, plus smaller carve-outs for youth sports programs and problem gambling treatment and education. July’s $214.4 million in gross gaming revenue generated roughly $109.3 million in state tax collections for the month alone.

That single month pushed New York’s year-to-date sports betting tax revenue past $725 million, keeping the state on pace to challenge its own record. New York collected $1.32 billion in sports betting tax revenue for all of 2025, a figure that has made it the largest single state revenue generator in the legal sports betting industry since mobile wagering launched there in January 2022.

Why the Hold Swing Matters

Hold rate — the percentage of total wagers a sportsbook keeps as revenue — fluctuates based on how favorites and underdogs perform across a given slate of games, along with how much parlay and same-game parlay volume is running through the book. A month with more chalk winning tends to push hold rates down, while a month where favorites struggle, or where high-margin same-game parlays lose more often than they hit, pushes hold up. June’s soft hold and July’s rebound illustrate just how much month-to-month swings in outcomes, rather than any change in betting volume or consumer behavior, can move the revenue and tax numbers that get reported publicly.

For New York specifically, that volatility has real budget implications given how directly sportsbook tax revenue is tied to education funding. A cold month for the books, like June, translates almost immediately into a softer month for the state’s coffers. July’s bounce-back is a reminder that these swings tend to even out over a full year, even if any single month can look dramatically different from the one before it.

A Market That Keeps Growing

New York remains the largest legal sports betting market in the country by both handle and tax revenue, and July’s numbers reinforce why. With eight licensed mobile operators competing for market share and a bettor base large enough to push nearly $1.9 billion through the system in a single month, the state’s New York sportsbooks market continues to set the pace nationally even as newer states ramp up their own mobile betting programs.

With football season approaching, operators are likely to see both handle and marketing spend climb further, as NFL and college football wagering typically drive the state’s biggest months of the year. If July’s hold rate is any indication of how quickly a single month can swing state revenue totals, the fall and winter stretch will be worth watching closely for both operators and the state budget office alike.