Parlays: the 20% tax

The books spend nine figures making parlays look fun. The state revenue reports show why: they keep four times as much of your parlay money as your straight bets.

Hold by bet type — straight from state regulators

State / period	Football	Basketball	Baseball	Parlay	All sports	Source
New Jersey, 2025 YTD	5.2%	3.8%	4.3%	19.2%	9.5%	[src]
Illinois, FY2025	4.6%	4.3%	4.5%	17.0%	8.75%	[src]
Nevada, 2025 (12 mo.)	7.98%	5.88%	7.18%	32.59% (parlay cards)	7.45%	[src]

Illinois hold computed by us from Figure 55: (handle − payouts) / handle. Nevada reports printed “parlay cards” separately; app parlays sit inside each sport’s line.

$755.3MNew Jersey books’ parlay win in 2025, on $3.942B bet [src]

60.3%of all Illinois bets in FY2025 were parlays — 234.6 million tickets [src]

~59%of Illinois books’ FY2025 win came from parlays: $780.3M of $1,317.5M, on 30.4% of the handle [src]

Read that again: in Illinois parlays were under a third of the money bet and nearly 60% of what the books kept. That is the product. That is why every app opens on a “boosted” parlay.

Same-game parlays: priced in the dark

On a normal parlay you can at least check the math: multiply the legs. On a same-game parlay you can’t. The legs are correlated (a QB over and his WR over move together), so the book throws out the multiplication and quotes its own number from its own correlation model — which you never see. They pad each leg with vig, then set the correlation price themselves. No state requires them to disclose the margin, and none of the reports above break SGPs out separately. What the reports do show is the outcome: parlay holds of 17–19% against 4–5% on straight bets.

Rule: if you can’t verify the price, you’re paying whatever the book wants. The fair price of a parlay of independent legs is the product of the fair (no-vig) leg prices — anything less is the house taking more. On our Long Shot Tickets we print both.

The books admit it to investors

DraftKings’ own 10-K: Sportsbook net revenue margin rose from 5.6% (2023) to 6.0% (2024) to 7.1% in 2025 on $53.55B of handle, “due to improvement in our Sportsbook hold percentage and improved promotional reinvestment.” [src] Higher hold means you lost more per dollar. They put it in the annual report as good news.

Nationally, the AGA reports $16.96B of sportsbook revenue on $166.94B handle in 2025 — a 10.16% hold, up 98 basis points in one year. [src] Legal Sports Report puts the industry’s implied hold at 6.9% in 2019 and 9.2% in 2024. [src] The sport didn’t change. The product mix did: more parlays.

Parlays: the 20% tax

Hold by bet type — straight from state regulators

Same-game parlays: priced in the dark

The books admit it to investors

Sources