(Image: AP)
The inaugural Sin City Super Bowl was unsurprisingly a record-setting event for sportsbooks.
The NFL‘s showcase event, Super Bowl 58 was by far the most bet-on sporting event in U.S. history. The Nevada Gaming Board announcing the state brought in more than $185 million in betting handle on the Kansas City Chiefs’ 25-22 overtime win over the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.
Figures were calculated with bets made at each of the 182 retail sportsbooks within the Silver State. The amount was a $32 million spike from last year’s game between the Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles and about $6 million more than the previous record-breaking handle, Super Bowl 56 between the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals.
Each of the previous two Super Bowls was played in a neighboring state to Nevada – Super Bowl 57 was held in Glendale, Arizona and the Rams-Bengals game was contested at SoFi Stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, California. But the fact the compelling Chiefs-49ers game was played at Allegiant Stadium, mere steps from sportsbooks on the Las Vegas Strip, was an indisputable factor.
“The Nevada Gaming Control Board congratulates and thanks all the stakeholders involved for successfully delivering such a spectacular event from the State of Nevada,” gaming board chairman Kirk Hendrick said in a press release.
Online Sportsbooks See Unprecedented Activity
Aside from the in-person wagers placed in Vegas, online sportsbooks saw their action spike in the lead-up as well. GeoComply, which provides geofencing technology to locate players for sportsbooks like FanDuel and DraftKings, announced a 22 percent increase in check-ins over the Super Bowl weekend and recorded about 15,000 check-ins per second in the minutes before kickoff.
GeoComply also recorded nearly 2 million new users in the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl and 8.5 million active sports-betting accounts throughout Super Bowl weekend, the latter of which represents a 15 percent spike from last year’s game.
“The continued transition to the legal market set the stage for a historic first Super Bowl in Las Vegas, and the record-breaking results we saw did not disappoint,” GeoComply CEO and co-founder Anna Sainsbury said in a press release. “Every year the legal market grows is good news for consumers and states and bad news for illegal offshore sportsbooks that become marginalized.”
Mixed Results For Sportsbooks
FanDuel reported more than $14 million in wagers placed, producing a handle of more than $300 million, which was far superior to the $10 million worth of bets and $215 million handle produced from the Chiefs vs Eagles game.
The sportsbook, and its chief rival DraftKings, combined for 75 percent of the total online sportsbook handle for the Super Bowl. But not every online sportsbook was celebrating the final result, since the Chiefs were a plus-money underdog at kickoff (+110) and the game cashed in for bettors who wagered it to go to overtime – at astronomical odds, as long as +1100 at some sportsbooks.
“It was a bad Super Bowl for the sportsbook,” BetMGM senior trader Tristan Davis said via a press release. “Many bettors had the Chiefs winning and overs on popular player props.”
Exact figures for the number of wagers will never be truly known – since money could change hands via unregulated pools and through illegal bookies. But the American Gaming Association estimated about 68 million Americans would bet more than $23 billion on The Big Game, which would mark a 35 percent increase from the Chiefs-Eagles game, and nearly 29 million people using a legal, regulated sportsbook.
“As the Super Bowl comes to Las Vegas for the first time, this year’s record interest in wagering marks a full-circle moment for the U.S. gaming industry,” AGA president and CEO Bill Miller said in a press release. “Our priority remains getting this opportunity by providing the consumer protections only a regulated market can guarantee and investing in responsible gambling tools, safeguards and education.”