US Sports Betting: Unreal Growth, and Glimpses of a Very Bright Future

Have you heard the news? Sportsbetting is one of the hottest tickets on the online gambling industry!

Of course, this won’t be new information to any players who’ve not been living under a rock for the past year or so.

It certainly seems that the market is in a established names are making room for themselves, elbowing their way into a market already brimming with worthy contenders.

As the bard said, you don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing!

Still, the scope of the thing is almost shocking to behold. Thankfully, two recent reports make the state of affairs abundantly clear.

Top 4 Sportsbooks in United States

1		20% up to CA$500	Play Players Accepted
2		50% up to $1,000	Play Players Accepted
3		50% up to $1,000	Play Players Accepted
4		100% up to $500	Play Players Accepted

Sports Betting Community

First, consider the findings of SBC’s North America Summit. Held in December 2021, this combination conference and trade show brings top gambling industry executives, legal advisors, and even regulators together.

These are extraordinarily well-informed people, folks who keep their finger on the pulse of what’s going on the business AND who are privy to much more information than the likes of you (or us). A survey was conducted among nearly 150 top execs. What did they find?

Astonishingly enough, there was widespread optimism that as many as 45 American States will legalize and regulate sports betting by the year 2025.

Should this turn out to be the case, it would spell even more rapid expansion for the industry than most of us would dare to imagine!

The survey also revealed some major concerns… which were, unsurprisingly, related to the form of regulation itself. Many folks were troubled by the possibility of high taxes stifling industry growth.

Some cited the State of New York’s jaw-dropping 51% tax on mobile sports betting. Will regulation on that scale inspire more States to do the same? How many operators will this drive out of the North American market? What other consequences might follow?

One other possible problem area might come from public backlash, should too much growth (and too widespread gambling ment and sponsorship) all take place at once.

Should both of those issues indeed become stumbling blocks for sportsbook wagers, US sports betting could find itself following the same rocky roads tread by Europe and the UK in recent years… but at an even faster pace! That would mean laws that can change severely year to year, tremendous market volatility, plenty of legal grey areas, and controversy galore.

Hopefully things wind up following a smoother course, but either way, there looks to be a serious uptick in sportsbook opportunities for US-based players coming right around the corner.

The State of the States

This information has to be placed in its proper context, which seems to be runaway growth, with the potential for even more yet to come.

According to the American Gaming Association’s Commercial Revenue Tracker, April 2022 was the second-best month ever for gambling revenues… trailing only March 2022 in that category. Nearly $5b was generated by gambling that month nationwide, a jaw-dropping 12% gain from the same month in 2021.

But there’s more. The data show that sportsbetting ing for nearly $500m of that figure (a handsome 10% of total gambling revenue)… which was close to a 75% increase from 2021.

A 75% revenue increase in a single year? That’s what you might call a growth sector!!!

Clearly all the inflation, fears of recession, and “economic anxiety” in the world aren’t doing much to undermine the success of sportsbetting. This is indeed a boom time for the sector!

The same source also reported that more than $125b has been legally wagered on sporting events since May of 2018. This translates to $9b in revenue for sports books, as well as $1.3b in revenue for States.

You can be that’s a number that regulators will take seriously as they decide whether to open their States to legal sportsbetting!

The Bottom Line

What does this information mean for players?

Two things. The SBC survey suggests that the market is almost certain to continue to expand horizontally in the next few years, opening up sports books to millions of new players. Meanwhile, the AGA’s information indicates that rapid growth is already occurring at a breakneck pace.

Taken together, this is best understood in the short message: buckle your safety belts!

This is going to be one heck of a ride. If it were possible to buy stock in the sportsbetting sector of the online gambling industry, we’d suggest that investors buy, buy, buy!

So far, much of the non-industry news surrounding the expansion of sportsbetting has had to do either with positive, semi-unintended consequences of increased legalization.

No one knows for sure what headlines will be saying on this topic in 5 or 10 years time. To hear the experts discuss it, though, it seems entirely reasonable to think that US sportsbetting is only beginning to hit its stride.