Indiana Bettors Put 31% of April Wagers on Parlays. Football Dropped to 1.2%.
Indiana handled $491M in April with a 10.12% hold. The interesting number is the sport breakdown, where the IGC publishes a level of detail most state regulators don't match.
Indiana's April 2026 sports wagering report carries two stories. The familiar one first: total handle of $491.4 million, up 12.4% year-over-year and the strongest April in program history. Operator hold of 10.12% produced $49.7 million in gross gaming revenue and $4.72 million in state tax at Indiana's flat 9.5% rate. Steady, predictable, on-trend.
What makes Indiana worth pulling out of the monthly stack of state reports is the second story. The Indiana Gaming Commission breaks out monthly handle by sport category, a transparency level only a handful of state regulators provide. The April breakdown across Indiana sportsbooks shows where bettor attention actually goes when there's no NFL season to anchor the calendar.
April 2026 in four numbers
Total handle: $491,374,768. Gross gaming revenue: $49,711,539. Hold: 10.12%. State tax: $4,722,596. The effective tax rate hits 9.50% exactly, matching Indiana's statutory rate on adjusted gross revenue. Indiana doesn't allow meaningful deductions for promotional play, which gives the monthly tax line a clean and predictable shape that some other states would envy.
Parlay at $153.5M is the headline
Parlay leading the field at $153.5M is the lede. That's not Indiana-specific in concept, parlays have led handle in most reporting states for over a year, but Indiana's category-level data makes the dominance unambiguous. Combined parlays, particularly same-game parlays, have become the default product for casual bettors across every major sportsbook app. Hold on parlays runs significantly higher than on straight wagers, so the 31% handle share translates to a substantially larger share of GGR.
April 2026 handle by sport category
| Category | April Handle | Share | FY26 YTD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parlay | $153,488,693 | 31.2% | $1,658,952,979 |
| Basketball | $127,818,901 | 26.0% | $1,149,883,534 |
| Other | $125,596,616 | 25.6% | $970,416,636 |
| Baseball | $78,425,185 | 16.0% | $336,096,721 |
| Football | $5,946,771 | 1.2% | $812,041,659 |
| Total | $491,276,166 | 100% | $4,927,391,529 |
FY26 YTD covers July 2025 through April 2026.
Basketball at 26% reflects the playoff calendar
Basketball at 26.0% ($127.8M) reflects the NBA Playoffs first round (opened April 18), the NCAA championship game on April 6, and the carryover from conference tournaments. Indiana's basketball-passionate bettor base, anchored by the Pacers, Hoosiers, and Boilermakers, leans into this category more than national norms in a typical month.
"Other" at 25.6% is doing real work
The "Other" category at 25.6% ($125.6M) is pulling more weight in April than in any other month. It captures NHL playoffs (also opened April 18), the Masters on April 9–12, the start of European football run-ins, MMA, tennis, and various futures markets. April is genuinely the month when "other sports" compete for attention with the major categories rather than being a rounding error.
Baseball at 16%, first full MLB month
Baseball at 16.0% ($78.4M) represents the MLB regular season in its first full month. This category will grow as a share of total handle through summer.
Football at 1.2% is the off-season floor
Football at 1.2% ($5.9M) is the off-season floor. The NFL Draft on April 23–25 produced some prop and futures action, plus there's spring league handle (UFL, Arena League holdovers). For reference, Indiana football handle peaks well into the multiple hundreds of millions during NFL season months. April is when it goes quiet.
Four Aprils of Indiana handle
Indiana is one of the cleaner growth markets in legal U.S. sports betting. Handle is up 52.9% over the four-year window, GGR is up 69.4%, and state tax revenue is up 69.0%. Every metric has grown in every single year. That kind of straight-line trajectory, while most other state markets have run into either tax-driven headwinds (Illinois) or natural ceiling effects (Connecticut, Arizona), reflects a few things working in Indiana's favor: a stable 9.5% tax rate that hasn't been touched since launch, a mature operator ecosystem (DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Caesars all active), and no major legislative threats to the existing structure.
April-over-April growth, 2023–2026
| Year | Handle | GGR | Hold | State Tax |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 2023 | $321.4M | $29.3M | 9.13% | $2.8M |
| April 2024 | $393.9M | $39.1M | 9.92% | $3.5M |
| April 2025 | $437.1M | $40.2M | 9.19% | $3.8M |
| April 2026 | $491.4M | $49.7M | 10.12% | $4.7M |
Source: Indiana Gaming Commission monthly filings.
What's worth watching next
Three things on our radar for the May report. (1) Whether parlay share continues to climb above 31% as operators lean further into same-game parlay products. (2) Whether basketball handle holds up through the NBA Finals run in June. (3) Whether Indiana finally crosses $500M in monthly handle, which would be a program record and which May's playoff-heavy calendar should support if the April trajectory holds.
Indiana keeps doing what state regulators originally hoped for from legal sports betting: steady growth, predictable tax revenue, no operator surcharges or customer-facing fees, no legislative drama. It doesn't make for the most dramatic monthly write-up. For anyone tracking what a healthy mid-tier U.S. sports betting market is supposed to look like, Indiana keeps printing the answer.