The Book Report Volume 4
For this week on The Book Report, we start with a story that has sent massive shockwaves through the sports gambling world. It is obvious that the return to sports has been amazing for operators around the country.
The state of New Jersey on Tuesday announced the biggest handle for a single month in sports gambling history. The state of Nevada, long seen as the leader in sports gambling revenue, just got stomped by the Garden State, as New Jersey recorded $667.7 million dollars in wagers during the month of August. Nevada had set the previous record of $562.7 million last November, but New Jersey just beat that by more than $100 million. Nevada has been beaten before by New Jersey, but never by this large of a margin.
You have to imagine that New Jersey will set another record in September with the return of the NFL and college football.
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Iowa was another state that had a huge month of August, and that was without college football. The Hawkeye state saw $50.3 million in wagers, which included nearly $35 million placed on mobile devices. The handle for August was more than double the handle for the month of July.
Although they don't operate in Iowa, BetRivers and Sugarhouse do operate in the states of Indiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Illinois. They also saw a big jump from the return of the NFL this past weekend.
In the state of Pennsylvania, 61% of all the wagers came in on Week 1 in the NFL, led by the Eagles and Washington game. The book did very well when Philly blew a big lead at halftime and lost the game outright.
In New Jersey, it was the Rams and Cowboys that drew the most action on Sunday and the Rams outright victory was also a major win for the book.
Staying on the East coast, DraftKings announced a partnership with ESPN on Tuesday morning. DK's stock prices soared with the news that DK has entered into a comprehensive multi-year agreement with ESPN to become a sportsbook link-out and exclusive daily fantasy sports provider of the media giant.
"ESPN helped revolutionize the 24/7 sports news cycle and continues to be the go-to source for many fans today on the latest and largest sports stories," said Jason Robins, Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of DraftKings said in a release. "We look forward to this collaboration to exclusively showcase DraftKings' daily fantasy content and offerings while also advancing further visibility and mainstream adoption of our regulated sports betting products."
It will be interesting how ESPN navigates their relationship with DraftKings, given their previous partnership with Caesar's/William Hill for sports betting odds and information. The term "co-exclusive" was used to describe the deal for ESPN betting information between the two companies.
"Sports betting is quickly becoming endemic to the overall experience of the sports fan," said Mark Walker, Senior Vice President of Business Development & Innovation, ESPN. "To us, that means greater opportunities to innovate and deliver the best and most seamless experience for fans, which will ultimately expand ESPN's brand and audience and increase engagement. It is an industry that we will continue to actively pursue as it grows and evolves."
All the upsets in Week 1 of the NFL were huge for the books, but not if you put $1,000 down to be in the Circa Survivor contest in Las Vegas with the chance to win $1 million dollars. There is no way that you would expect to be out after the first Sunday of the season. However, that’s exactly what happened to 425 players who picked the Colts to beat the Jaguars.
BetMGM reported one of the most incredible parlay hits in recent memory on Tuesday. One bettor turned $10 into over $152,000. There are hail mary bets, and then there are bets like this. If you hit something like this, just stop betting, because you will never cash something this amazing ever again.
Want more crazy parlays? How about this 22 cents turned into over $1300. That's the new definition of a "chip and chair".
And finally, the Penn National has started to tease their launch of the first-ever Barstool branded sports betting app in the state of Pennsylvania. The expectation is that Barstool's passionate audience will help to generate big business in the coming weeks.
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Matt Perrault is a featured writer at BettingPros and the host of the Daily Juice podcast. For more from Matt, check out his archive and follow him @sportstalkmatt.