North Carolina launched online sports betting on March 11th, and the metrics are already suggesting that the Tar Heel State may become a regular member of the exclusive billion-dollar handle market.
Betting On Success
After only a few days of mobile sports betting, it is too early to emphatically gauge how lucrative a sports betting market will ultimately become. However, several metrics can give researchers a general idea as to how a state will do when compared to similarly sized markets.
GeoComply, an electronic tracking service that monitors betting activity, revealed that North Carolina, a state with a population of 10.8 million, already had 370,000 active accounts in the first 48 hours of wagering with users logging into their accounts nearly 5.4 million times in those first two days.
🚨GeoComply Heat Map Alert🚨
48 hours in and more than 5.36 million geolocation checks from 370k+ sports betting accounts within North Carolina. pic.twitter.com/fuJTnRvMmJ— John A Pappas (@yanni_dc) March 13, 2024
“It’s early, but North Carolina is already delivering on lawmaker expectations when they legalized online sports betting last year,” GeoComply SVP of Compliance Lindsay Slader said in a news release. “The state’s well-structured approach to mobile sports betting safeguards consumers and opens up significant revenue streams. With March Madness around the corner, we are excited to see continued growth.”
Demographics and income levels are also factors that must be considered as every state is unique and, like fingerprints, none are identical. Researchers have plenty of data at their disposal now that 59% of adults, 21 and over, live in a market in which mobile sports betting is available.
North Carolina is the first state in which ESPN BET has entered the market from its inception. Moreover, the other big six mobile sportsbooks were also revving their respective engines from the moment the state gave them the green light last Monday. With competition that fierce, it is understandable that promos and bonuses will be generous, creating even more fanfare and interest for North Carolinians to sign up and get down.
Professional Sports Are Sports Betting Ambassadors
It doesn’t hurt the cause that sports betting is live right before one of the most popular betting events in the nation – March Madness. North Carolina has a long and storied college basketball history with Duke and UNC winning the national tournament on several occasions.
Therefore, the combination of interest in college hoops and the plethora of come-ons from the seven sportsbooks is projected to be a perfect storm for an impressive opening month of sports betting. And that doesn’t even include the NASCAR factor, so widely popular in southern states like North Carolina. Auto racing’s governing body already has a sports betting partnership with DraftKings in the Tar Heel State.
The explosion of online sports betting is being further fueled by sports leagues and their franchises, both of which were once enemies of sports betting until it was legalized in the U.S. when PASPA was struck down in 2018 by the U.S. Supreme Court. It was then that these leagues quickly, and unapologetically, pivoted knowing a new and highly profitable revenue stream was available by signing partnership deals with one of the many online sportsbooks.
Five years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down PASPA — the federal law prohibiting sports betting.
The aftermath:
▪️ 34 states with legalized sports betting
▪️ 4 more with pending legislation
▪️ $220 billion in wagers placed
▪️ $3 billion in generated tax revenue… pic.twitter.com/IhGQ7ObUWp— Front Office Sports (@FOS) May 14, 2023
As of this writing, all four of the major North American sports leagues have affiliations with at least one mobile sportsbook, and so too do many of their franchises. The NFL has 22 of 32 franchises located in states with legalized online sports betting while the NBA has 18 of its 30, Major League Baseball has 17 of 30, while the NHL has 17 of its 32 franchises currently in partnership deals with sportsbooks.
Those numbers will only increase as online gaming comes to more states. North Carolina is simply the latest example of the popularity of sports betting in America.
