It’s good to be king. It’s not so good to be a deposed king. New Jersey knows the feeling.
The Garden State has led the way ever since widespread legal sports betting began in 2018—in fact, it was New Jersey’s legal challenge that overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which opened the doors to the fast-growing national industry.
Now New Jersey is on the outside looking in when it comes to sports betting at least for part of January.
Figures confirm that New York was top dog in mobile sports betting during the first two weekends of this month, at least according to numbers of transactions. Vancouver-based tech geolocation company GeoComply recorded 17.9 million transactions from January 14 to 16 in New York State, up from 17.2 million January the previous weekend, when mobile sports betting first went live in the state.
New Yorkers wagered a total of $150 million through four betting apps during the first weekend of legal mobile sports betting program, according to Forbes Magazine. The four are Caesars, DraftKings, FanDuel and Rush Street Interactive.
The data documents the number of times the company was called on to confirm a caller’s location. It is considered a good indicator for at least a minimum level of sports betting activity, since at least four out of five bets come via online.
GeoComply indicates 1.2 million new accounts were initiated in New York since mobile sports betting began on January 8. Close to 88 percent of those customers bet for the first time. During a 12-hour period that ended at 9 p.m. on January 8, GeoComply recorded 5.8 million transactions on mobile phones within New York state. By contrast, the volume in the two closest states topped 2.3 million transactions in Pennsylvania and 2.1 million in New Jersey.
New York’s online sports betting market expects to top $1 billion in annual revenue, according to analysts at Macquarie. Yahoo Sports’ betting app, powered by BetMGM, launched a week after the first four. The other four companies—Bally’s, Wynn Interactive, Resorts World and PointsBet—have been conditionally licensed and will be approved if they meet the state’s requirements.
New York State Senator Joe Addabbo, a leading proponent of online gambling in the state, is confident the other five licensed operators—BetMGM, PointsBet, WynnBET, Bally Bet and Resorts World—will make up for the head start and create a nine-horse race.
“I don’t have to watch a Mets game any longer and see ads targeting New Yorkers to go to New Jersey to bet. I wanted to rip the TV off the wall,” he said.
The momentum of New York’s sports betting launch has continued and it is mostly home-grown, said Lindsay Slader, the company’s managing director of gaming. “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,” she said.
But don’t shed a tear for the Garden State quite yet.
Figures on the quantity of bets—or handle—in both states have yet to be reported. It’s important to note that while log-ins show that New York attracted more bets than New Jersey, the results did not come at the expense of New Jersey, which likely did not lose business to New York.
That possibility will be followed as New Jersey casinos and sportsbooks claim at least 20 percent of their business has come from New Yorkers crossing over into New Jersey to make bets in the days prior to the opening of New York’s mobile market.
New Jersey averaged 12.6 million geolocation transactions in the two weekends before New York’s mobile launch, and 13.1 million in the two weekends since.
Around 9.3 percent of bettors have accounts in both states, the company said.
“The growth in New York has been explosive,” said Richard Schwartz, CEO of Rush Street Interactive, which operates the BetRivers online sportsbook. “It is, by far, off to the fastest start of any of our sportsbook markets in terms of handle. Along with having the largest population of any state with legalized sports gambling, New York is one of the few U.S. states with multiple teams across all four major sports. It’s simply a recipe for long term success.”
FanDuel said it is “very pleased” with the New York market to date.
“While all markets are critical, it was especially important for FanDuel to do well within our home state,” spokesman Kevin Hennessy said.
States require a bettor to be physically set within their borders in order to make an online sports bet. It uses a combination of cellphone data, software, hardware, and databases to determine where a phone or laptop trying to make a bet is actually located.
Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed budget allocated $249 million in revenue from mobile sports betting this year. The state has already collected $200 million in licensing fees. In 2023, the state expects to collect $357 million and $465 million in 2024. By 2027, New York will bring in $518 million in mobile sports betting revenue.
The success could accelerate the process of awarding the three licenses for casinos in the Greater New York City area. The state will enjoy a windfall from the application fees first and then from the state’s take of casino revenue.
