Indiana
Indiana receives $21.5m in sports wagering tax for 2022
Ollie is an experienced writer covering everything from esports to regulatory developments in the USA. He loves obscure data points and the occasional lousy parlay on 20 tennis players which inevitably loses.
All posts by Ollie RingUpdated12 hours ago on April 23, 2024
Reporting for December has revealed the state of Indiana received $21,578,223 in sports wagering tax for 2022. This shows a 34.4% increase year-on-year, up from $16,053,010 received in 2021.
The effective tax rate on GGR in Indiana is 9.5% which is on the lower side compared to the majority other states which offer regulated sports betting. Indiana offers both retail and mobile sports wagering, with mobile skins attached to retail venues accordingly.
Who bets on what in Indiana?
The breakdown for statewide handle by sport is as follows:
| Statewide handle by sport | 2022 | 2021 | % change |
| Football | $616,828,071 | $618,560,349 | -0.29% |
| Basketball | $350,665,185 | $371,715,220 | -5.65% |
| Baseball | $243,005,365 | $221,031,996 | +9.94% |
| Parlay | $598,684,166 | $584,564,791 | +2.41% |
| Other | $340,643,780 | $338,087,428 | +0.74% |
| Total | $2,149,826,567 | $2,133,959,784 | +0.75% |
The biggest shift in wagering activity in Indiana was in baseball, where there was an uptick of 9.94% in handle. Basketball was the most negatively impacted, down $21m in handle, at a 5.65% decrease year-on-year.
What is particularly notable with regards to Indiana is the fact that despite a 0.75% uptick in handle only, tax receipts were up 34.4%. This is explained by the fact that the 9.5% sports wagering tax is levied on the sports wagering adjusted gross revenue, which represents the handle less the payouts on winning wagers made during each reporting month.
The figures above show that Indiana’s sportsbooks made more AGR for the calendar year of 2022 than 2021, despite fairly constant handle. With regards to the betting mix, betting on parlays increased as a percentage of overall betting handle which would typically lend itself to higher margins for commercial operators, too.
Football remained the most popular betting product, followed closely by parlays with basketball third just ahead of ‘other’ which includes every sport outside of the big 3 US sports.
The first revenue figures of 2023 will be posted by the Indiana Gaming Commission on February 10th. As of December 2022, there were 13 venues operating in a retail capacity in Indiana. Of those, 10 have sports betting skins attached, and 4 have multiple sports betting skins. The largest sportsbook by handle is comfortably DraftKings which is attached to Ameristar Casino, which in December took handle of $134,828,946.
