There were more than 100 million geolocation checks on Saturday and Sunday, a 25% increase from last year’s Super Bowl weekend, according to tracking firm GeoComply. There were more than 100,000 geolocation checks alone in and around State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, from over 8,000 fan sportsbook accounts.
This was the first Super Bowl held in a state with legal sports betting. The next two Super Bowls will be Las Vegas, the epicenter of American gambling, and then Louisiana, which launched mobile sports betting in 2022.
According to the American Gaming Association, more than 50m American were projected to have placed some sort of bet on this year’s game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs, either through a legal book, an unlicenced bookie, an unregulated offshore site or through a social game such as Super Bowl squares. This year’s game also featured the first legal mobile Super Bowl bets in Ohio, Maryland and Kansas, which shares the Kansas City metro area with Missouri, the Chiefs’ home state.
Here are some preliminary state results as well as highlights from a wide range of leading US sportsbooks:
Top states continue to impress
The nation’s highest-grossing sports betting markets, once again, putting up eye-popping handle totals.
Nevada, once again, led the way, generating $153.2m in handle, though it was less than the $178.9m accepted for last year’s game. Nevada has seen its handle drop as more states legalize sports betting. Caesars’ William Hill app in Nevada, the state’s highest-grossing sportsbook by handle, also crashed midway through the game, hurting overall revenue potential.
New York, the nation’s sports betting handle leader, generated $123.8m in its second Super Bowl with legal mobile betting. New Jersey, the nation’s previous handle leader, saw handle decline from $143.7m for Super Bowl LVI to $109.3m for this year’s game.
Pennsylvania was among the nation’s biggest gainers. Pennsylvania’s handle grew from roughly $68 for last year’s game between the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals to $84.3m for this year’s game featuring the hometown Eagles.
Sportsbooks set records
The Super Bowl was another success for the nation’s leading sportsbooks.FanDuel, the US market share leader by gross gaming revenue, accepted roughly 50,000 bets a minute during the peak of Super Bowl action, according to CNBC. This was despite a 23.5% year-over-year decline in spending on digital Super Bowl advertising, per an Eilers & Krejcik report.
The company’s overall all Super Bowl marketing spend this year centered on a “live” field goal attempt by former NFL player Rob Gronkowski.
DraftKings, the No. 2 operator by sports betting market share, increased digital ad spending by 34% for this year’s game, per Eilers & Krejcik. The company spent around $4.5m, which equated to nearly half of all such spending among all sportsbooks for this year’s Super Bowl.
BetMGM, the No. 3 operator by handle, was the only other company to spend more than $1m on digital Super Bowl ads, according to Eilers & Krejcik. Only three other companies spent at least six figures on digital marketing: Caesars ($620,000), Tipico ($530,000) and WynnBet ($252,000).
Caesars and BetMGM, two of the highest spending US sportsbooks, curtained year-over-year Super Bowl digital advertising spend by 74% and 45%, respectively.
Additional companies tout success
Super Bowl LVII was a chance for upstarts and other companies to take part in the “Big Game.”Prophet Exchange, the nation’s first licensed sports wagering exchange platform, saw more than $1m in matched bets for Super Bowl LVII, its highest-grossing event so far, according to a statement. The platform launched six months ago and is only live in New Jersey.
Kambi, the third-party tech platform for Rush Street Interactive’s sportsbooks as well as Penn Entertainment’s Barstool Sportsbook, recorded its second-highest handle ever during this year’s Super Bowl, per company release. This will be Kambi’s last Super Bowl powering Barstool before Penn integrates its own in-house tech platform later this year.
OpenBet’s sportsbook customers processed more than 13.6m bets during Super Bowl LVII, which encompassed nearly $300m in wagers. At its peak, OpenBet platforms were accepting 65,000 per minute, according to the company.