Kansas Handle Jumps 18% in August as Sports Betting Revenue Falls Back to Earth

DraftKings sees most action, backed by large promotional offers.

August gave bettors a glimpse of 2023 football with NFL preseason games throughout the month and college football’s Week 0. That was enough for Kansans.

The Kansas Lottery announced that August’s legal sports betting handle hit $94.4 million, an 18.4% increase compared to July’s $79.7 million. But the state’s sportsbooks ended up with only $4.4 million in adjusted revenue, down a whopping 35% from July.

The drop wasn’t too surprising, since July’s 12.1% hold on its accepted wagers is tough to repeat. August’s hold was a more standard 8.2%. On top of that, promotional deductions increased last month to $2.8 million, reducing operator revenue.

Like most states, Kansans prefer to wager online. Just 4% of the state's sports betting handle came from the four brick and mortar sportsbooks ($3.8 million). The rest came from the six online sports betting site operators ($90.6 million).

All in all, the Kansas lottery collected $484,366 in taxes in August.

DraftKings leads the way

DraftKings again was the top dog in the Sunflower State, propelled by their promotions, where their $1.4 million was the same as the other five sportsbooks combined.

Their $42.8 million in settled handle was 47% of the entire Kansas sports betting handle, and they turned that into $1.7 million in adjusted revenue. However, the revenue was far below the $3.2 million they reported in July.  

Rival FanDuel was again in second, with $27 million in bets while their revenue dropped to $1.6 million after $2.4 million in the previous month.

After a significant drop-off, BetMGM came in third with a $7.9 million in handle followed closely by Caesars with $7.4 million in bets. BetMGM was able to maintain their slight edge over Caesars as they offered more than four times the promotional offers ($361,000) than Caesars ($80,000).

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