All About North Carolina Sports Betting Handle And Revenue

By Jim Tomlin

@jdtomlin68

May 7, 2026 10:19am

BetCarolina.com, your home for expertise on all North Carolina sports betting topics, has assembled this guide to explain terms such as handle, revenue and tax collections.

The state launched its legal mobile sports betting market on March 11, 2024. North Carolina has eight mobile operators offering a variety of wagers throughout the state. There are also a few retail outlets at tribal casinos in North Carolina.

To place a wager on the outcome of a sporting event, or a specific statistic within a game (this is known as prop betting), you must be physically located within the Tar Heel State. Like the other 30-plus states with mobile sports wagering, North Carolina uses geolocation technology to ensure that wagers are being placed legally within the state by a bettor who has an account with an online operator.

The companies offering North Carolina sportsbook apps include the major names you have probably heard of, even if you are new to sports betting. BetMGM, Caesars, DraftKings, FanDuel and ESPN BET all have North Carolina online sportsbooks. The other operators as of January 2026 are bet365, Fanatics and Underdog Sports.

Sportsbooks in the state have partnered with various pro sports teams or other entities in North Carolina that hold major sporting events. For instance, BetMGM has a deal with Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord and Fanatics NC Sportsbook has partnered with the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes.

You can place a wager with any of those NC sports betting companies by signing up and using your smart phone, laptop or desktop computer to wager.

North Carolina Sports Betting, April vs. March

The North Carolina sports betting market was down in April compared to March, which is normal. But the figures that the North Carolina State Lottery Commission released on May 7 also tell a tale of a maturing market.

The online sports betting handle (which the Commission calls "total wagering revenue") was $612,495,383 in April. That is a 15.7% decrease from March, when the state’s legal online sportsbooks accepted $726,174,802 in wagers.

However, last month’s handle was 6.3% higher than April 2025 ($576,209,378) in a year-over-year comparison, a strong indicator that legal sports betting interest continues to rise.

April’s gross wagering revenue (GWR) derived from sports betting was $64,464,939, a 15.1% decline from $75,918,638 in March. The fact that revenue and handle declined almost in lockstep in a month-over-month comparison is a coincidence; handle measures the level of interest in wagering while revenue measures how good bettors were at beating the books.

The real measure is YOY revenue, which spiked 37.7% last month compared to April 2025 ($46,803,712).

North Carolina taxes sportsbook revenue at an 18% rate, so that figure of $11,603,689 fell from the previous month ($13,665,355) but rose compared to 12 months earlier ($8,424,668) at the same rate as revenue.

One thing to watch is a possible deep Stanley Cup run from the Carolina Hurricanes. Increased local interest in hockey betting won’t make up for the absence of football and college basketball in the Tar Heel State, but it could help boost numbers in late spring, which is normally a quieter time for sports betting action statewide and nationwide.

North Carolina Mobile Sports Betting History