GeoComply Out With Super Bowl Weekend Betting Transaction Figures

While Super Bowl 55 may have disappointed on the field, early data from GeoComply, "the global leader in geolocation and compliance technology" released Monday shows that action on the Big Game is likely to exceed expectations and set records for the amount of legal bets within US borders.

Actual finalized numbers may not actually come out until April, thanks to Illinois' tardy reporting schedule, but expectations are that once the dust settles, the market will have had unprecedented success. And with the overall US legal sports betting market expected to increase dramatically in 2021, sportsbooks are already looking forward to the 2022 NFL Championship Game.

Prior to the contest, the American Gaming Association (AGA) predicted 23.3 million Americans would place a wager on the Super Bowl and bet a total of $4.3 billion. The AGA predicted the Super Bowl being the biggest single bet on event ever on US soil.

More Markets, More Action

2020 saw exponential growth in the US legal sports betting industry both in terms of money taken in and the number of states that launched their own wagering platform. It was understood in the period leading up to the NFL Championship game that there would be a robust market for Super Bowl Bets because of those factors, and that the 100+ prop betting opportunities that most sportsbooks offered would certainly help.

Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Montana, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington DC have all been welcomed into the US legal sports betting fold in the last 12 months, providing the US scene around 70 million more potential bettors. Three of those states have quickly elevated into the "Top-6" among legal sports betting states and have become major factors in the overall US scene.

The Numbers

GeoComply on Monday reported that there were in excess of 32 million wagers placed on Super Bowl 55 on Saturday and Sunday alone. That is more than triple that was reported by the firm last year when an estimated 9.5 million bets were placed over the same period.

A 236% increase is further indication of a US legal sports betting market that is reaching stratospheric heights and is becoming a topic of conversation around the virtual water-cooler and among lawmakers both in participating and prospective legalized sports betting states.

The numbers are even more impressive, considering the technical difficulties reported by BetMGM in its sportsbook kiosks and mobile app prior to Sunday’s game. Also, there were pre-game glitches reported by the two DFS giants in which both experienced outages before the Super Bowl kicked off.

A healthy surge in traffic has been cited for the outages in all three instances.

Individual States

New Jersey has taken over the title as the most bet-friendly state in the US, and it hasn't been close the last six or so months. The Garden State neared a $1 billion handle in December alone - nearly double the next highest jurisdiction, Nevada which reached a $550 million handle.

However, it was Pennsylvania that stole the show in regard to betting on Super Bowl 55. The State reported 6,396,479 sports betting transactions over the weekend with New Jersey's 6,309,362 coming in a close second.

The state of Indiana was third in terms of betting transactions on the Super Bowl with 2,167,970, giving the "Big 3" and incredible 9,291,736 total bets for the Game.

The remaining states also saw robust action and included the Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island and West Virginal legal sports betting scenes. Those “other” participating states recorded a total 17,159,926 betting transactions at its sportsbooks according to GeoComply stats.

The lesson learned thanks to Super Bowl 55 is that the US legal sports betting industry seems to be bullet-proof. COVID-19, and a mini-recession threatened to stand in the way of a robust Super Bowl Betting outcome, but it just didn’t happen. It’s further proof that you cannot bet against legal sports wagering in the US.