The sports betting industry throughout the United States saw some negative trends throughout the summer months, but everyone had their eyes on the start of football season. While college football provides some solid numbers, the return of the NFL is going to have states putting up some massive numbers.
Geocomply is company that tracks online sports betting action throughout the country, and it has released a report on date from Week 1 of the NFL season. While a big jump was expected from what was seen over the last few months, the data shows that football betting is now more popular than ever.
NFL is Clearly the King
According to the information from GeoComply, betting on the NFL was up more than 50% from what was tracked during Week 1 of the 2022 season. Those numbers are going to show up again once each state starts to release revenue and handle reports for the month of September.
Online sportsbooks always seem to be running huge promotions during the start of the NFL season to get new bettors on board, and that plan worked. There was a 40% increase in the amount of sports betting accounts, with bettors trying to get in on the NFL betting options.
One factor that did skew the numbers a bit was the fact that Kentucky launched sports betting on September 7, but online betting wasn’t even offered in that state yet. While this report only focuses on the NFL betting action, bettors are simply making more bets during this time of the year on all sports.
DraftKings and FanDuel were the online sportsbook apps that were downloaded the most, and those are the clear leaders when it comes to this form of wagering. Fanatics and PointsBet had 12% of the share in terms of betting apps downloaded, and that is now essentially the same company.
Fanatics is rolling out a new online sportsbook in several states, and it was live for the first time during the NFL season. Bet365 has also been making a major push in this industry, and that’s another online app that chose to promote heavy for Week 1.
These States Are Missing Out
Even though there are now more than 30 states with legal sports betting of some kind, lawmakers in other states just haven’t been able to get to the finish line. Geocomply also tracks betting attempts from states without legal sports betting, and there were some states that saw plenty of bettors trying to make bets.
There were over 553,000 attempts to make a bet on a sporting event in the state of Missouri, and that is one state that has continued to fail to get betting legalized. Mississippi is another state where online betting isn’t allowed, and there were over 250,000 attempts in that state.
Georgia, Alabama, Minnesota, and South Carolina were other states pointed out in the report, and they are all missing out on a significant amount of revenue. Not only did Geocomply track those illegal attempts, but stopped those bettors from getting in on the action.
