New Jersey Fast Becoming Sports Betting Giant

It is merely just over a year that sports betting became legal in the Garden State, and already it is set to surpass Nevada as the most significant role player in sports betting soon. This is all thanks to the NFL season bringing a whole new level of excitement surrounding sports betting.

AmericanGambler.com founder, Alex Kostin believes that the small remaining gap between Nevada and New Jersey is soon to be closed when the NFL season opens in early September. This is based on the statistics from their website, which is a community focused on the sports betting world and committed to legalized gambling data. New Jersey is currently the sports betting outlet for the neighbouring New York City as well as Philadelphia, from where punters are expected to flock to get their legal bets placed.

Comparing the Figures

For the period from September to January, NJ managed sports betting revenue of $1.5 billion. During the same period, Nevada brought in an income of $2.7 billion. What makes these figures however genuinely significant is the fact that sports betting is only legal in NJ since June last year, while Nevada has been set in this business already since 1949 with online betting being legally available since 2010. To further expand on these figures, in a time frame of only 11 months, NJ managed to overtake those of the sportsbooks of Nevada based on monthly charts.

During May NJ managed a total of wagers placed of $318.9 million, exceeding that of Nevada, totalling at $318.3 million. They repeated that during July with $251 million against the $235 million which Nevada managed. NJ is also prepared with more than twice the amount of sports betting sites available than a year ago. During the previous NFL season, NJ only had eight land-based betting sites, and seven sites were available online.

This year they offer a total of 25 options between 10 land-based sites and 15 sites available online, with five more ready to be launched soon. Another contributing factor to the higher number in sports betting revenue generated by NJ than in Nevada is based on the fact that New Jersey has a much larger population than Nevada. Nevada has a population of only 2.5 million people while NJ is in the area of 9 million with an added 8.5 million in NYC.

Of the total wagers placed in NJ, 80 per cent is based on sports betting, and of this 80 per cent, 20 per cent is done so by New Yorkers who have to be physically present in NJ to place their bets. This is, however, an easy commute which can be done quickly either by car or train from either Philadelphia or New York City, while it is at least a five-hour commute to do the same from Los Angeles to Nevada.