Indiana Sports Gambling Numbers Drop in April Compared to March
STATEWIDE — Hoosiers spent $236 million in sports bets in the month of April, which was down from nearly $317 million in March.
Jessica Welman, an analyst with PlayIndiana.com, says that’s not a big surprise. March Madness helped spike numbers two months ago, but now, there just aren’t as many sports to gamble on.
“Generally, across the board in almost every state, we’ve seen a dip from March to April, because people love college basketball — Indiana in particular — and then in April, there wasn’t as much,” Welman said. “Basketball is still doing quite well, even without college basketball, the NBA playoffs are on the horizon and people are getting interested in that. Baseball is doing okay too, but it’s just not as big as a football game or March Madness.”
Still, the $236 million that Hoosiers spent in sports gambling turned into $20 million in revenue for the state, and almost $2 million in state taxes.
So what does Welman expect at the end of this month? About the same, or possibly even lower numbers. That’s even with the Indianapolis 500 coming up.
“Certainly people will bet on it more than they bet on other auto races, but it’s not going to be some big driver of betting action,” she said. “It’s just one of those niche things where people pop in, maybe place a small bet, and that’s it.”
She compares it to the Kentucky Derby that happened at the start of this month, which has a certain amount of people placing bets for just one day — it just doesn’t add up compared to the NFL, college football, or college basketball.
