All About Sports Betting Handle And Revenue in Illinois

By Christopher Boan

@cgboan

July 16, 2025 11:51am

The experts at IllinoisBet.com have assembled this guide to explain what we mean when we talk about financial figures from Illinois sportsbooks, which include handle, revenue and tax collections.

The sports betting market in Illinois includes retail sportsbooks at the state’s casinos, plus mobile sports betting apps.

In the financial language of sports betting, handle is simply the total of all sports wagers made in the state during one calendar month. The handle can be specified as either retail (in person) or online (using a device such as a laptop, desktop or mobile phone). In Illinois, bettors wager hundreds of millions of dollars each month – sometimes more than a billion dollars – and the vast majority of the action is on Illinois betting apps.

Revenue is what is left for the gambling operators after winnings are paid out. The tax collections from sports gambling is determined by a 15% tax rate (plus additional taxes for wagers placed in Cook County and the City of Chicago) that is applied to the operators’ Revenue.

Sport gambling in the Land of Lincoln was legalized in 2019 with the Sports Wagering Act. The first legal sports bet was placed in March 2020.

Illinois Sports Betting, May vs. April

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The fifth month of the year delivered slight declines in handle but sizeable improvement in revenue for Illinois sports betting operators. Illinois sportsbooks had a total wagering handle of $1,274,389,414 and $120,933,146 in revenue.

Overall, the Prairie State’s sports betting handle dipped by 0.8% in May, down from the $1,284,273,932 reported in April. Of that total handle, parlays were the most popular play with $369 million wagered and basketball (nearly $300 million) was the most popular sport. The May mobile sports betting handle was $1,247,313,501, a 0.6% decline from April ($1,254,554,515), according to numbers that the Illinois Gaming Board posted on July 16.

The state’s wagering revenues were up 11.3% from the $108,606,963 that operators took in during April.

That jump in sports betting revenues correlated directly with a 13.3% month-over-month increase in wagering taxes, which went from $39,947,295 in April to $45,271,588 in May. The mobile tax bill of $44,703,054 represented a 13.3% increase from April’s sum of $39,439,926.

Finally, of the state’s total wagering handle, $1,260,122,086 came from bets placed on professional sports, $7,508,336 in wagers came from special events and an additional $5,151,880 in wagers were placed on college sports.

Illinois Mobile Sports Betting History