Kansas City is a 1.5-point favorite over Philadelphia in Sunday’s Super Bowl LIV. If you like both offenses to click playing in favorable indoor conditions, the over is 48.5.
That’s enough football talk from this baseball fan. I’m more of a food/commercials guy, but the annual arrival of sports betting’s biggest day seems like a good occasion to check in on the Illinois market.
This will be the fifth Super Bowl open to legal wagers for Illinoisans. In February 2021, the Illinois Gaming Board (igb.illinois.gov) reported more than 13.4 million online and in-person bets on pro sports, with a total handle of more than $371 million. In 2022, the total was more than 16.7 million bets with a handle exceeding $526 million. The 2023 totals exceeded 22.7 million and $654 million. Last February’s figures were nearly 24.5 million and more than $826 million. Could the 2025 handle clear $1 billion?
PlayIllinois.com, a gambling-centric news site, updates the cumulative totals. The count, for bets made from March 9, 2020, through the end of November 2024, is $36,859,309,831 wagered across all college and pro sports and $460,276,339 tax revenue for the state, the latter up more than $130.8 million in one year.
Last spring lawmakers implemented an adjusted gross revenue system for the sports betting tax. Casinos pay a 20% base rate, then 25% on hauls exceeding $40 million, 30% above $50 million, 35% on $100 million and 40% on every dollar once AGR clears $200 million.
That structure affected industry titans DraftKings and FanDuel, both of which balked but eventually backed off threats to shut down or impose surcharges. With that development seemingly resolved, I’m officially atoning for repeated criticism about the General Assembly being slow to take advantage of the May 2018 U.S. Supreme Court opinion removing the barrier to legalized sports betting nationwide.
Illinois is consistently No. 2 in the country in gross revenue, regularly outpacing New Jersey, which led the charge to change federal rules and took a three-year head start. Meanwhile, some states are still dragging their feet into the marketplace, such as neighboring Wisconsin, which hasn’t opted to upend state constitutional limits that make most types of gambling the unique prerogative of tribal nations.
Like the occasional updates on the legal marijuana market, I report on sports betting as an observer, not a participant. Outside of fantasy football or a low-stakes squares game, this type of action holds no personal appeal, and I’m a little resistant to how much (and how quickly) betting discourse and advertisement have subsumed sports media. But pot and betting are now massive operations in Illinois, and the tax take has a significant influence on state budgets, so they definitely deserve continued attention.
• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.
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