Oregon gambling revenue surpasses $1.6 billion 

Finance News

Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade released a new financial audit this week of the Oregon Lottery, the agency that provides the second-largest pot of state funding after income taxes.

The new audit shows a second consecutive year of very robust revenues after a period in which the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the bars and taverns that provide most of the agency’s income through nearly 11,000 video lottery terminals.

Here’s how 2023′s $1.678 billion in revenue (down a fraction of 1% from 2022) stacks up historically:

Video lottery revenues have boomed even though agency figures show there are 8.5% fewer machines across the state than there were a decade ago. That’s because people are playing the video lottery more: Oregonians wagered $395.66 per capita last year, versus $261.12 in 2014.

Within the numbers, there was actually a tiny decline in net video lottery revenue in 2023, although that game continues to produce about 70% of the agency’s net revenue.

One significant change from last year: The numbers show that state revenue from sports betting jumped substantially and far more than budgeted: The state netted $55.3 million from sports bettors, a 72% increase from 2022. That net gain came from a gross total of $565.5 million bet on sports, which is 7.2% higher than the agency budgeted.

Although sports betting accounts for just a small fraction (3.3%) of total lottery sales last year, the agency is counting on young sports bettors to replace some the aging video lottery players over time.

Lottery spokesman Matt Shelby says the agency is pleased with the growth of its sports book, which since 2022 has been operated under a new contract with DraftKings.

“We launched with Scoreboard [in 2019] and then switched to DraftKings,” Shelby says. “In effect, we started over. The player base is still maturing, and sports betting is becoming much more mainstream.”

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