Online betting and gaming operators in Michigan brought in $127.4m in March, a 42.8% month-on-month increase in the second full month of online activity, thanks in part to betting on the NCAA basketball tournament.
The majority of this revenue – $95.1m, up 19.3% from February – came from online casino gaming.
Sports betting, meanwhile, brought in $32.3m, up 240.0%.
Michigan Gaming Control Board executive director Richard S. Kalm said this increase was largely due to betting on the NCAA basketball tournament.
“It looks like March Madness added a bounce to the sports betting handle, which jumped 19.1 percent from February, and internet gaming seemed to increase in popularity with monthly adjusted gross receipts going up 18 percent from February,” Kalm explained.
“This led to increases in taxes and payments, which means more funding for the City of Detroit, K-12 education, economic development and tribal communities.”
After accounting for bonuses, online casino brought in $88.7m and online betting $19.0m.
Operators paid a total of $17.8m in taxes to the state of Michigan, with $17.3m of this from online casino and the remaining $535,000 from sports betting. In addition, the state’s three commercial casinos in Detroit paid a further $5.2m in taxes to Detroit.
The MGCB also announced that the three commercial casinos – MGM Detroit, MotorCity Casino and Penn National Gaming’s Greektown Casino – brought in $113.8m in land-based revenue.
Table games and slots brought in $110.9 million, up 93.0% from March 2020, which saw casinos closed for much of the month, and up 28.2% from last month. Retail sports betting revenue was $3.0m.
MGM led the way in overall land-based revenue with $43.2m, up 80.6%. MotorCity was close behind with $42.0m, up 107.2%, while Greektown’s revenue was up 93.7% to $25.6m.
Looking only at retail sports betting revenue, MotorCity and its FanDuel Sportsbook led the way with $1.2m. MGM, with a BetMGM sportsbook was second with $868,000 while Greektown and its Barstool sportsbook brought in $825,000.