Business way up since plunge in 2009
Fans bet $99 million on Super Bowl 2013, and could break the $100 million mark this year, according to a report in the Associated Press.
Sports betting “is not just an amenity anymore; it’s not just icing on the cake, it’s part of the meal,” said Jay Kornegay, who runs the LVH sports book. “We’ve seen crowds like we’ve never seen before.”
Johnny Avello, an industry veteran who runs sports book at Wynn Las Vegas, is jubilant about the surge in business.
“Even Al Michaels on Sunday Night Football will say, ‘Wow, they covered the spread,’” he told the AP.
It’s a far cry and a welcome change from 2009, when the recession caused many sports fans to hold fast to their wallets. That was the only fiscal year of the past decade that saw a decline in sports betting. The previous Super Bowl record was set in 2006, before hard times kicked in.
In 2013, bettors set records in September, October and November. In November, the last month for which statistics have been released, sports books handled $490 million in wagers.
For the past decade, football has represented nearly half of the sports book handle, with most gamblers buying their tickets well ahead of the games.
“If you walk in to any sports book, 99 percent of the time the place is mostly empty,” said RJ Bell of Las Vegas-based Pregame.com.
