Favorable odds: Pennsylvania sportsbooks have handled $4.5B in bets since opening in 2018
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With the NFL playoffs kicking off this weekend, eager fans are expected to flock to sportsbooks across Western Pennsylvania, helping to bolster an industry that in its infancy already has seen billions wagered in the state.
Since sports betting became legal in November 2018, wagers on sports events have totaled more than $4.5 billion, making Pennsylvania one of the country’s top sports betting markets.
The industry, which started out with eight casinos offering sportsbooks, has grown to 14 sportsbooks along with 12 online or mobile operators. In the two months of 2018 when sports betting was legal, $17.5 million was wagered, according to data from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.
Over the first full year of legalized sports betting in 2019, Pennsylvania sportsbooks handled $1.5 billion in bets. That more than doubled in 2020, with more than $3 billion in wagers through November, the latest month figures are available. This year’s growth also comes despite casinos being largely shut down this spring in compliance with covid-19 mitigation orders.
“This industry has grown more than a lot of people would have expected it to grow,” said Andre Barnabei, vice president of gaming at Rivers Casino on Pittsburgh’s North Shore.
In May 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 25-year-old Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, a federal law that largely outlawed sports betting in all states other than Nevada.
By June 2018, New Jersey — the state behind the Supreme Court case — legalized sports betting. In November 2018, Pennsylvania’s first sportsbook opened at Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course in Dauphin County.
To date, 19 states have legal sportsbooks operating. An additional six states — Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia and Washington — have legalized sports betting but have not opened sportsbooks, according to the American Gaming Association.
As one of the first states to legalize sports betting, Pennsylvania quickly left its mark on the industry.
By 2019, Nevada was still the largest market, with $5.3 billion wagered that year, while New Jersey closely followed with $4.6 billion in bets, according to data from Legal Sports Report. Pennsylvania was third, with $1.5 billion wagered.
Through November 2020, New Jersey had the largest amount of wagers, with $5 billion, followed by Nevada ($3.7 billion) and Pennsylvania again in third ($3 billion.)
Those billion-dollar markets include wagers from several months last spring when casinos sat empty and sports largely stopped as covid-19 spread. Online sports bets continued to roll in, although at a slower pace, helping to somewhat boost the struggling gambling industry.
By July, sports restarted with the return of Major League Baseball. The NHL’s season, which had a months-long hiatus, reconvened in August with the Stanley Cup playoffs. NFL games began in September, while the NBA started its season in December.
As the sports schedule was once again built up, millions of dollars in wagers began flowing into Pennsylvania’s casinos. In October, sportsbooks across the state handled a record $525.8 million in wagers — up from $241 million that same month a year earlier, according to Gaming Control Board figures.
Through 11 months of 2020, Valley Forge Casino Resort in King of Prussia handled the most sports wagers — $1.18 billion. The Meadows Racetrack & Casino in Washington County followed, with $705.2 million. Both have horseracing tracks.
Rivers Philadelphia, formerly SugarHouse Casino, was third, with $243.7 million in sports bets, followed by Rivers Pittsburgh with $221.8 million.
Cait DeBaun, spokeswoman for the American Gaming Association, attributed the success of Valley Forge and the Meadows to a large number of bets placed through mobile apps and their affiliation with FanDuel and DraftKings, two of the most popular betting apps in the state.
Rivers Pittsburgh’s sportsbook opened in December 2018, first in a temporary location inside the Pittsburgh casino. Since then, the North Shore sportsbook has handled more than $456 million in sports bets, according to state figures. The Meadows sportsbook, which opened in October 2019, has so far seen $761.6 million in wagers.
Live! Casino Pittsburgh, which opened in November at Hempfield’s Westmoreland Mall, generated $160,000 in sports betting wagers during its first few days. After being open 20 days, all casinos in the state were closed for most of December in compliance with mitigation orders to help slow the spread of covid-19.
With Live! Casino reopened, the handle — or amount wagered — is expected to grow at the sportsbook, which is through a partnership with FanDuel. It is too soon to know how the sportsbook will perform in the coming months, General Manager Sean Sullivan said.
“We have the tools to be extremely successful,” he said. “Twenty days doesn’t tell a story, and we’re still getting our sea legs. We’re still trying to understand the business ourselves.”
The facility features sports-themed entertainment areas, as well as several television screens for viewing multiple games at once.
Many are preparing for an influx of bettors this weekend ready to wager on the slate of NFL playoff games beginning Saturday and ending with the Steelers hosting the Cleveland Browns on Sunday night. At Rivers, which opened its $5 million sportsbook last year, booths placed at the back of the facility are reserved for Saturday and Sunday, Barnabei said.
While the room will not be as full as it was last year because of social-distancing measures and limited patrons to every other seat, Barnabei said, “For all intents and purposes, yeah, I expect the room to be full.”
At Live! Casino, Sullivan said he expects to see the number of bets increase over the next few weeks. He noted wagers typically peak during the Super Bowl or March Madness.
Between 2018 and 2019, football fans have shown an outpouring of wagers, with estimates totaling $4.76 billion for Super Bowl LII and $6.8 billion for Super Bowl LIII. Those numbers increased for March Madness, with an estimated $10 billion wagered in 2018, according to estimates from the American Gaming Association.
“You have a lot of day-to-day sports betting enthusiasts that are betting on games, betting through the basketball season, the baseball season, but where you really see the retail customer come in is in those marquee events,” Sullivan said.