You just knew this was coming! With gambling expansion still on fire, there was more Super Bowl betting this year in America than at any time in the past. Who’s surprised? Most likely not too many people… but it’s still news, and still nice to hear about.
The numbers have been crunched by our good friends at GeoComply, a geolocation company making sure bettors are where they say they are. And according to their numbers there were 100 million bets made om the big game last weekend. That’s 25% more than last year!
It may have helped that this year’s Super Bowl was played in Arizona, where legal betting on sports was just launched in the not-too-distant past. And in fact, over 100,000 sports betting transactions were made on Super Sunday! We wonder how many of those wagers were made by state residents, and how many were from visitors in town for the game?
FanDuel reported that at one point they were accepting about 50,000 bets every minute, and that they had over 2 million users on their platform during the game. Their Lick of Destiny marketing stunt with Rob Gronkowski certainly may have helped those numbers!
What was not so pretty was the Super Bowl betting (or lack thereof) in the state of Nevada, where the William Hill app crashed just before the heavy betting volume kicked in. It’s difficult to draw a direct correlation, but sportsbooks in the state only brought in about $153 million in bets, which was well short of last year.
Could the WillHill failure have cost the state significant income? Well, while one app was crashing another was setting a record. MGM Resorts reported their highest Super Bowl handle in history for Nevada. Of course, their numbers were a combination of in-person and online wagers.
One bit of good news for Nevada, however, is that the state should set a Super Bowl betting record next year, as the game will be held at Allegiant Stadium, home of the Las Vegas Raiders, who’s stadium is on the Strip!