West Virginia lottery director discusses sports betting
The lottery director of West Virginia said that sports betting, which is legalised, can be difficult.
US.- Sports betting has been approved in West Virginia for more than a year, but revenue from the gambling modality hasn’t been as good as expected. John Myers, the state’s lottery director, said that sports betting can be difficult.
Myers said that a lot of the West Virginia staff has been trying to make the sports betting program work. He said that revenue accounted for less than 1% of the total in sales in 2018. “When you look at it — we did US$1.14 billion in sales last year. Not even US$2 million was from sports betting,” Myers said, according to WVNews. “That’s less than 1%.”
“The expectations are different from different people. Some folks have high expectations because they enjoy doing sports wagering and they’ve not been able to see that come to fruition. Although that’s not been something the Lottery can typically affect, because we’re not setting up the systems, placing wagers or making odds. We’re just making sure everything is within the law.”
The Lottery Commission said when the lawmakers passed the sports betting bill that locals spend approximately US$250 million on the black market. A note from the commission submitted to lawmakers estimated that it would bring approximately US$5.5 million annually after five years of the implementation.
Myers wasn’t director of the lottery at the time of that estimation. However, he says that he doesn’t believe that sports betting will ever bring US$5 million in West Virginia. “We didn’t really know exactly what we would do our very first year. We’re ending the year close to US$1.2 million. I think it’s lower than what we expected, but not as much as what others expected it to be not having two of the casinos operating for part of the fiscal year. We would have seen some additional revenue, I’m sure, although we did get the majority of the football season, which is typically the largest revenue generator.”
June financial results
In June, West Virginia sports betting posted US$377,552 in revenue, a 148.2% drop month-on-month. Furthermore, total handle fell by 13%. May revenue was US$937,065, which more than doubles last month’s figures. Then, the overall amount wagered by players was US$10.7 million, higher than June’s US$9.5 million.
