New York Mobile Betting Passes $91B as State Tax Hits $1.3B

Sep 18, 2026

More than $91.2 billion has been wagered through New York mobile sportsbooks since their launch in January 2022. State tax collections from the market reached $1.3 billion in SFY 2026, up 78.4% from three years earlier.

Mobile betting has generated $8.3 billion in gross gaming revenue through the end of SFY 2026, according to a September 16 New York State Comptroller report cited by the New York Post. The underlying quarterly data puts the exact totals at $91.22 billion in handle, $8.30 billion in GGR and $4.26 billion in state tax since launch.

That also gives a useful measure not highlighted in the headline figures. Based on handle and GGR, 15M calculates a cumulative sportsbook hold of roughly 9.1% over the period. New York taxes mobile sportsbook GGR at 51%.

Mobile wagering is now the state’s second-largest gaming revenue source, behind only the lottery. New York collected more than $5.1 billion from gaming in SFY 2026. Without mobile sports wagering, revenue from the other gaming categories was down 0.8%.

Basketball Accounted for More Than $9B in 2025 Wagers

New York recorded nearly 7.2 million unique mobile wagering accounts in 2025. The figure refers to accounts rather than individual bettors. Average annual wagering came to $3,500 per account, while the average bet was $42.

The report’s breakdown by sport shows how concentrated the market was around a small group of sports. Five categories represented 91.9% of wagering: basketball, football, baseball, tennis and soccer.

Basketball led by a wide margin with $9.13 billion. Football followed at $5.05 billion, with baseball at $4.42 billion. Tennis generated $3.02 billion and soccer $1.70 billion.

$2.2B June Handle Still Produced a Revenue Drop

The report also shows why handle alone does not determine sportsbook or tax revenue. More than $2.2 billion was wagered in June 2026, up $604 million, or 36.6%, from a year earlier. GGR moved in the opposite direction, falling 43.5% to $116.8 million.

The Comptroller pointed to the New York Knicks’ championship run as one possible reason. The team entered the NBA Finals as an underdog. During the first two weeks of June, bettors placed more than $1 billion in mobile wagers, yet sportsbooks recorded a combined $14.4 million net GGR loss as winning payouts exceeded wagers received.

Prediction Markets Add a New Revenue Question

The Comptroller also singled out prediction markets as a potential challenge to the current state model. Kalshi and Polymarket recorded a combined $208.6 billion in global trading volume from January through July 2026. Sports represented 79.8% of Kalshi volume and 51.2% of Polymarket volume during the period.

For New York, the issue is not only regulatory. Licensed mobile sportsbooks feed a 51% GGR tax system that produced $1.3 billion for the state last fiscal year. Sports event contracts operate under a different tax and regulatory framework.

The Comptroller does not estimate how much New York revenue could be affected, but the scale of prediction-market sports trading puts that question directly alongside the growth of the licensed sportsbook market.