The legal online sports betting era got underway in New York over the weekend — and it’s already yielded some massive results.
According to GeoComply tracking data supplied by managing director Lindsay Slader, weekend geolocation volumes for NY totaled a whopping 17.2 million pings, including more than eight million pings in New York City — larger than any other standalone state total within the US, Slader tweeted.
Slader had tweeted earlier that New York totaled 5.8 million geolocation pings from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday. By comparison, the next highest state, Pennsylvania, had 2.3 million pings over that period.
The massive results are very promising with New York possessing the potential to become the highest producing revenue state in the country from online sports betting.
Still, there were hiccups.
Not all was perfect for NY online sports betting debut
Saturday morning, bettors had difficulty securing their $100 promotions from FanDuel. And by the evening, the Caesars app went down during the Eagles-Cowboys game. Both companies were able to rectify the issues, but it wasn’t something either wanted to happen. Caesars had made significant waves earlier in the day with its massive promotion.
“The numbers were massive. We had almost a million individual bets taken,” Caesars CEO Thomas Reeg told CNBC. “We knew New York sports bettors were a passionate group. They didn’t disappoint this weekend.”
Of the outage, Reeg said: “When you have massive demand like we did, you see the pinch points in your system. Unfortunately we did not have flawless performance this weekend, and as a sports bettor myself I know how frustrating that can be.”
Fortunately, it was before the Feb. 13 Super Bowl, which serves as a massive benchmark for the state. Hopefully, at least for NY online sports betting operators and policymakers, all the kinks will be worked out by then.
Plenty of action for NY betting apps
FanDuel, Caesars, DraftKings and BetRivers are fully operational, with BetMGM, Bally Bet, PointsBet, WynnBet and Resorts World still to come.
Heading into the weekend, the hope was that all nine could be up by the end of January, but nothing has been official in that regard.
According to DraftKings, the NFL accounted for 46.3% of its New York handle on Day 1, with 24.2% on the NBA. In fact, 60.1% of all bets in NY involved the NFL, with 16.3% on the NBA.
Caesars noted that, from Saturday morning’s launch up until the late window of NFL games kicked off Sunday, the total handle through Caesars NY nearly equaled how much was wagered in “in all 20 active states with Caesars Sportsbook.” Of that total, 65% was driven by NFL betting.
