All About Sports Betting Handle And Revenue in Illinois

By Christopher Boan

@cgboan

August 19, 2025 10:15am

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, June vs. May

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The typical mid-summer swoon bit Illinois sports betting operators in June, according to numbers that the Illinois Gaming Board posted on Aug. 18.

Overall, June’s total handle for Illinois sportsbooks was $957,108,829, down 24.9% from May ($1,274,389,414). The mobile sports betting handle of $935,079,439 was a 25.0% dip from May’s $1,247,313,501 in a month-over-month comparison.

The state’s total sports betting revenue finished June at $113,926,184, a 5.8% decline from $120,933,146 in May. Mobile sportsbook revenue dropped 5.9%, from $118,610,932 the previous month to $111,612,283 in June.

As a result of that drop in wagering intake, Illinois’ total sports betting tax was $42,845,797 in June, down 5.4% from May ($45,271,588). Mobile wagering accounted for $42,265,698 in taxes for the sixth month of 2025, a 5.5% dip from $44,703,054 in May.

Overall, June represented the first month since August of 2024 where the sports betting handle finished south of $1 billion, though the Prairie State’s year-over-year data was a bit rosier. June’s handle was a 12.8% increase from June 2024’s total of $847,966,975, giving the state a sliver of a silver lining during the sixth month of this calendar year.

Illinois Mobile Sports Betting History