Tennessee's July Sports Betting Figures Drop

The state of Tennessee wrapped up its first full month with a new tax policy surrounding the legal sports betting platform in July that included the best sportsbooks. The biggest takeaway was not the annual summer sports betting slump, but rather the lack of information the Tennessee Lottery Sports Betting Council included in its monthly report.

Tennessee has always been one of the least transparent states in terms of information released in conjunction with a mobile-only legal sports betting platform featuring the best sports betting apps. But July's earnings report took the lack of public information to a whole new low.

Here is what the entire gaming report looked like.

The changes seen in July

On July 1, the Tennessee sports betting industry started taxing gross revenue, rather than adjusted gross income for the 12 Tennessee sports betting apps. It's a shift that would see a 1.85% tax levied on gross wagers taken in by the state's providers, rather than the 20% tax on sportsbook adjusted gross income. Taxes on sportsbook gross income has become the standard across most, if not all, U.S. legal sports betting jurisdictions.

Seems logical!

But what the new rules led to was the state's Sports Wagering Council (SWC), formerly the Sports Wagering Advisory Council (SWAC), eliminating the reporting of gross revenue totals for the entire sports betting industry in Tennessee.

Not knowing the July revenue figures poses a problem with determining just how well the Tennessee sports betting providers performed in July. The new rules make it impossible to compare July 2023 figures with anything else since widespread mobile-only sports betting was legalized in the state.

That lack of reported figures has produced perhaps unintended scrutiny on the SWC, as transparency seems to have taken a backseat in the Volunteer State scene.

Getting into the numbers

From the Tennessee Sports Wagering Council's July report, we're able to see that $215,489,157 was wagered during July, with a gross handle of $214,114,055 after adjustments. 

That's just under a $15 million drop from the $230.34 million bet in the state during June, but a nice year-over-year 17.9% jump from the $182.77 million bet in July 2022.

We now have no way to determine just how much, or how little that gross revenue for the state's 12 mobile providers improved, or decreased month-over-month, or year-over-year.

We do know that $3,951,411 in taxes was paid by the Tennessee sports betting apps in July however. That's down from $4,635,761 in June, but up from $3,668,804 in July 2022.

An interesting fact coming out of Tennessee's July 2023 monthly sports gaming report is that if the new laws were in effect in July 2022, the state would have collected about $3.4 million in taxes last month, not the $3.669 it in fact did.

Where does it leave Tennessee?

Tennessee's legal sports betting industry will keep plugging along, despite the changes in rules surrounding how regulators report monthly earnings.

But there figures to be more of a spotlight on just how regulators have chosen to release their monthly reports.

Will the lack of transparency become a bigger issue? For those that like to compare month-over-month and year-over-year figures, that answer is a big "YES."