The Point: New York sports betting proves a sure thing
New York is one of the latest states to legalize online betting. Credit: AP/Charles Krupa
The first day of legal mobile sports betting in New York Saturday produced eye-popping numbers, hot deals, technological snafus and some reassuring news for the bargain-shopping gambler.
Even though the 51% tax on sports profits paid to New York by its legal bookmakers ranks among the nation’s highest, the four betting sites that launched here this weekend did not push the price of wagers up compared with other states, as some industry analysts predicted.
The rush of new-age bookmaking is tracked by a thoroughly modern method.
To open an account or place a bet, the phones of mobile gamblers need to be "pinged" to prove to bookmakers that the customer is physically in a state where gambling is legal. In New York there were 5.8 million pings in the first 12 hours of legality Saturday, according to GeoComply, which processes such requests. A map the company put up shows in graphic detail just how furious the "pinging" was, with GeoComply reporting New York City and Long Island in particular, plus gambling-heavy areas like Buffalo and Rochester, providing the bulk of the traffic.
GeoComply said that one-day total of pings, and the 17.2 million total weekend pings, for the final week of the NFL regular season, far outstrip any other state’s kickoff.
As for the tax revenue, for the 2 ½ years sports betting has been legal in New York, in-person only, at several upstate casinos, the total state take from gaming taxes was $3.7 million. Several gaming experts say that multiyear total was likely exceeded by the state’s take just from last weekend.
Although the margin for profit is so small for bookmakers here, operators were offering big promotions. Caesars offered a match of up to $3,000 on new deposits and $300 in free wagers for new customers and it seems to have worked out. The company, one of the four online franchises operating, says this weekend it processed nearly a million New York wagers on sports across the nation, and world.
And that’s even with a three-hour crash of the Caesars site Sunday night, as volume spikes also caused a number of smaller snafus for DraftKings, FanDuel and BetRivers.
It’s as if downstate New Yorkers had developed a taste for, and knowledge of, sports gambling, even before it was legalized!
Lane Filler is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
