NY poised to overtake NJ in Super Bowl sports wagers

Despite being in the mobile sports betting market for just over a month, New York is likely to surpass New Jersey in wagers placed for Super Bowl LVI on Feb. 13.

A Feb. 2 report by the online publication PlayUSA.com shows that of the $1 billion in bets estimated for U.S online and retail sportsbooks, $160 million is expected in New York and $130 million in New Jersey, when the Los Angeles Rams face off against the Cincinnati Bengals at SoFi Stadium in California on Feb. 13. For Nevada, patrons are slated to wager $175 million.

In the first month that online and mobile app sports betting was legal in New York, patrons wagered a combined $1.18 billion across the apps Caesars, FanDuel, BetMGM and BetRivers, just shy of New Jersey’s record $1.3 billion October sports betting handle.

Sports betting is legal in 30 states and Washington D.C., but Nevada and New Jersey have typically led the pack, driven by commerce in the gambling meccas of Las Vegas and Atlantic City, respectively.

“However you look at it … this debut in New York has outstripped even the most optimistic forecasts so far,” said Eric Ramsey, an analyst with PlayUSA.

GeoComply Solutions, a tech company based in Vancouver, Canada, reported on Jan. 18 that 1.2 million new accounts were created in New York since the start of online sports betting, with most trying sports betting for the first time.

Data from GeoComply showed 17.2 million transactions the first weekend of live online sports betting, and 17.9 million transactions in the second weekend.

Regardless, “New Jersey is unfazed,” GeoComply added, logging 12.6 million transactions in the two weekends leading up to New York’s sports betting expansion, and 13.1 million in the two weekends afterward.

“The momentum of New York’s sports betting launch has continued and it is mostly home-grown,” GeoComply’s managing director of gaming Lindsay Slader said in a statement.

“The vast majority of users are brand new to regulated sports betting in the U.S. The data tell us that New Yorkers are dumping illegal sportsbooks for the new legal options and operators are also excelling at attracting first-time bettors.”

Most of the bettors hailed from New York City, and “wanted to bet legally … but were dissuaded from crossing the river to make those wagers in New Jersey,” Ramsey said. “And upstate residents previously had to travel to Pennsylvania to bet online, making participation even more inconvenient for them.”

The lack of legal sports betting in Vermont and Massachusetts also sets up New York and the Albany region to capture spending from those states, Ramsey added.

Similar to New York, most of New Jersey’s sports wagers were placed online or via mobile apps rather than at the in-person retail sites in Atlantic City’s nine casinos. Of the $10.9 billion in wagers placed in 2021, just $986 million was in-person, and the rest were placed remotely, according to state gaming regulators.

Wagers and gambling had to be done strictly online when casinos closed between March and July 2020 amid the pandemic.