The United States sports betting industry has exploded over the last two years, and experts were expecting a huge Super Bowl Sunday. Most states have already reported handle and revenue numbers from the Big Game, and it was a record-setting weekend in most markets.
In 2020, the total Super Bowl betting handle came in around $300 million, with an official total not being available. Early reports have the 2021 total going well over $400 million, and some experts believe that $500 million is a real possibility.
Not every market in the US breaks down handle and revenue from the Super Bowl, and that leaves industry experts to create a guess. Looking at the states that have already reported totals, it is clear that 2021 brought in much more action.
These numbers were bound to increase due to a number of new betting markets now offering sports betting, but states that had Super Bowl betting in 2020 saw large jumps as well. The entire US sports betting industry has been setting new handle records each month, and the Super Bowl is always the biggest sports betting event of the year.
Nevada the Biggest Market
New Jersey has become the biggest sports betting market in the United States, but they were actually second on the list in terms of Super Bowl betting handle and revenue. The title belonged to Nevada, which has long been the leader in the US.
There was over $136 million wagered at the 184 sportsbooks across the state of Nevada, and this was actually a decrease from a year ago. Most retail sportsbooks in the state remain closed or operating under strict protocols, which kept the numbers down.
New Jersey brought in more than $117.4 million on the Super Bowl, and the sportsbooks won over $11 million. Pennsylvania was the third biggest market for the big event, bringing in more than $53 million in wagers.
GeoComply Tracks Traffic
GeoComply is one of the most commonly-used geolocation services in the United States, and it recently released a report on the number of transactions that were made on Super Bowl Sunday. According to the report, transactions went up by more than 250% for Super Bowl weekend, and new betting markets played a role in those numbers.
New Jersey and Pennsylvania both saw traffic increase by more than 70 percent, and this trend was also noticed for conference championship weekend. Illegal sports betting is also popular during the Super Bowl, but those transactions are not tracked by GeoComply.
Kambi Issues Statement on Outage
Barstool, BetRivers, and DraftKings dealt with a major issue on Super Bowl Sunday as an outage forced nearly 90 minutes of dead-time on their sites. At one point, bettors went 30 straight minutes without being able to place a wager, but the issue was ultimately resolved by kickoff.
Kambi powers these three sportsbooks, and that company issued a statement on Wednesday taking the blame for the outage. It wasn’t the amount of traffic that caused the issue, but rather a technical problem with one of the betting options.
