West Virginia recently joining Nevada, New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania as one of a handful of states that allows online gambling to take place legally. Players in the state have waited quite some time for the option to come to fruition and once DraftKings debuted its online casino on July 15, gaming was on! Players took to the site quickly, with the brand generating almost $8 million in wagers in just the first six days of operations.
Nice First Week
In speaking with WV MetroNews, John Myers, the Lottery Director in West Virginia, revealed the totals. The lottery has not yet approved online slot gaming, so the numbers are pretty impressive considering they only account for table games.
Myers said that the virtual gaming tables of DraftKings brought in a total of $7,979, 923 in wagers from the 15-20 of July. In taxes, the state earned $160,379 of that amount. This is a solid number considering that online gambling is new in the state. The handle, taxes and revenues should only increase as the market grows larger and slots become available.
If slots were in the picture, the betting handle would have most likely been much higher. Players tend to prefer slots over table games, so there are probably some residents or visitors in the state that would be more likely to sign up and play if slots were an option.
What’s to Come?
Now that DraftKings is launched, who else is going to offer services? It looks as though DraftKings will be the sole operator for at least a little while. The Greenbrier has a deal with MGM and Flutter, so they could launch and online casino. This could result in DraftKings former daily fantasy sports rival, FanDuel as well as BetMGM to enter the market. Both of these brands already offer online sports betting in the state.
Poker is also on the table, though not one operator has said they will be offering this service in the state. Not PokerStars or partypoker. It seems that operators are more focused on casino gaming as that is the big money maker when it comes to online services, instead of poker options.
As for West Virginia, they see the benefit of online gambling already. According to Myers, the figures show that the casino product has promise due to the fact that it is generating an equal amount of revenue when compared to sports betting.
In 2019, the state passed the Interactive Wagering Act and the law allows for the four racetrack casinos and Greenbrier to offer online gambling. Each casino can have three Management Services Providers to offer online gaming.
It will be interesting to see where the revenues and handle stand once the online casino has been in operation for a full month. There are a few weeks left to go, but as it stands, the DraftKings Casino is already doing well and setting up to see a handle of 10s of millions a month if players continue to bet as they have during this first week!
