The paper is full of articles about the Super Bowl (the championship game of US professional football), coming up next Sunday.

About 140 million Americans watched the big game last year. It is, routinely, the year's highest rated show. Americans also like to gamele. No sports event brings in bets like the Super Bowl. In Las Vegas, last year's legal handle was more than $80 million. But these days such numbers are dwarfed by online betting. Estimates put last year's online handle at about $400 million.

Why is it called a 'handle'?

some total guesswork: if you want to control something, you'd like to get a handle on it.

what better way to control the outcome of a game (didn't the term come out of <ahem> horse-racing?) than with a $400,000,000 dollar handle!

I would have thought it was the amount handled (by the bookies).

In Onelook I found this definition in MoneyGlossary.com: "The whole-dollar price of a bid or offer is referred to as the handle (e.g., if a security is quoted at 101.10 bid anDefinition: d 101.11 offered, 101 is the handle). Traders are assumed to know the handle. See: Full."