This State Recorded $1 Billion in Sports Bets in Its First Legal Month

On January 1, Ohio joined the growing list of states in which sports betting is legal.

House Bill 29 was signed into law in December 2021. It took some time to put the infrastructure in place. But finally – a little more than one year later – Ohioans got the green light to place their legal bets.

And they haven't held back...

Headline No. 1:

The first month of sports betting in Ohio topped $1 billion in wagers.

McCall's Call: The numbers are in and according to the Ohio Casino Control Commission, about $1.1 billion was bet on sports in January. Nearly all those wagers were placed online – $1.09 billion versus the $23 million bet at brick-and-mortar locations.

Those bets generated $21 million in tax revenue for the state, the bulk of which will go toward funding for its K-12 education program.

January's strength immediately pushed Ohio to the top of the sports-betting heap. Only a handful of states have recorded monthly betting totals north of $1 billion – including New York, Illinois, Nevada, and New Jersey.

Three companies generated the majority of Ohio's sports bets in the month – FanDuel, DraftKings (DKNG), and BetMGM. Those firms brought in $494 million, $344 million, and $82 million worth of wagers, respectively.

The chart below breaks down all of the state's sports-betting firms and their totals...

Now, don't get me wrong. Folks definitely rushed to get their bets in now that the statewide ban has officially been lifted. But these betting figures are still going to get bigger and bigger as the popularity of sports betting grows.

And it's just more proof that the sports-betting megatrend has continued to gain steam.

Now the only question is... What state will be the first to top $2 billion in monthly bets?

My wager is on New York. It brought in just shy of $1.8 billion in bets in January – which was also a new record.

Betting totals are on the rise, and I expect they'll continue to climb in the months and years ahead. That's great for sports-betting stocks. So if you haven't already begun to build exposure to this trend, now is the perfect time to do so.

Headline No. 2:

Clean energy and batteries will make up more than 80% of newly built power capacity in 2023.

McCall's Call: Last month, I told you that 2023 is shaping up to be a huge year for solar energy. And we just got more backup to that claim...

More than half of the new electric-generating capacity this year will come from solar installations. The 29 gigawatts ("GW") of solar power expected to be added this year could be enough to power nearly 22 million homes.

Clearly, 2023 will be a big year for the solar space. But let's not forget about the other clean-energy sources...

The U.S. Energy Information Administration ("EIA") expects electricity providers to build 7.1 GW of new wind energy and nearly 9 GW of battery-storage capacity this year.

In other words, more than 80% of the new power-generating capacity built this year will come from clean energy and battery storage.

That's the big takeaway here. If everything goes as planned with these projects, 2023 will be a huge year for all clean-energy sources.

Regular readers know that I'm incredibly bullish on clean-energy technology. Solar and wind power and next-generation batteries have seen rapid growth in the past few years. But clean energy still makes up only about 20% of U.S. electricity generation. That means there's plenty of room for growth throughout the Roaring 2020s.

And if the EIA's projections are any indication, that growth is playing out right before our eyes.

Now, clean energy may never make up 100% of power generation. But its share of electricity will increase in the next decade-plus as more states and utility providers invest in these power sources.

That makes now the right time to gain exposure to this trend...

Exchange-traded funds ("ETFs") like the iShares Global Clean Energy Fund (ICLN) or the Invesco Solar Fund (TAN) provide broad exposure to the clean-energy space.

But keep in mind that I don't recommend ETFs to my subscribers.

I prefer to build my own ETFs by taking the basket approach to investing. This means we spread our money out across a handful of the best-positioned stocks within a megatrend. It allows us to minimize our downside risk while maximizing our long-term potential.

We've begun building energy-related baskets in each of my newsletters. And in our most recent issue of MegaTrend Investor, I revealed a company that is at the forefront of the solar industry. It has strong tailwinds behind it that will allow it to grow as more solar projects are proposed.

And in our next issue – which will be released on March 15 – I'll recommend another energy-related stock to help balance out our approach to the trend.

If you'd like to learn more about this strategy and be among the first to find out the name and ticker of the next addition to our portfolio, I urge you to click here now.

The global transition to clean energy is a huge theme that I'm watching for the Roaring 2020s and beyond. The time to get in position is now.

Here's to the future,

Matt McCall
Editor, Daily Insight
March 8, 2023

Did You Miss My Latest Podcast?

On this episode of Making Money With Matt McCall, you're in for one of my good ol' fashioned rants. And this time it's related to the Federal Reserve – with a dissection of Chairman Jerome Powell's latest comments. The central bank has pushed the U.S. economy to the edge of a cliff. And I fear that we're awfully close to falling over.

But it's not all bad. A chart formation that has only occurred 12 other times since World War II suggests that the S&P 500 Index is in for a strong 2023. And finally, I take some time to answer viewers' questions. This is a Fed-focused episode you won't want to miss.