States in the US continue to mull over the dynamics of their prospective sports betting markets, as Arizona moves forward and Massachusetts debates, whilst the well-established jurisdiction of Nevada records a strong online uptake.
In the Southwestern state of Arizona, legislators have announced that the market ‘is on target’ for the launch of sports betting in September, in time for the collegiate football season.
Meanwhile, in the neighbouring state of Nevada, figures have shown that mobile betting has risen to between 63% and 64%, a substantial increase on figes from previous years.
Despite this trend, Adam Candee, Co-Host of the Legal Sports Report, predicted that a rise in land-based casino gaming will occur as COVID-19 restrictions continue to ease.
“First of all, I can tell you anecdotally, good luck finding a parking spot at a casino,” he said. “Everybody who wants to take a vacation right now who was backed up from not being on the road for a year from COVID, they’re going to Hawaii and they’re going to Las Vegas.
“There’s a lot more people in casinos right now, and the other thing to factor in might just be the sports calendar also. We have the NBA a little backed up this year coming into July when it normally is ending in June.”
Heading to the northeast to Massachusetts, Candee noted that the New England state is set to become one of the only jurisdictions in the region to have not implemented a sports betting market.
“Political will is stronger this year than it has been in years past, whether that is a sustained push by DraftKings, or whether it’s looking around the rest of the region and realising that Massachusetts is about to be one of the only ones in that greater Northeast Atlantic region that doesn’t have legal sports betting.
“I wonder if the push from Connecticut, becomes a little bit more serious because not only do we know that Mohican and Foxwoods market to the New York market, but of course they market to the Massachusetts area as well and that’s been made clear by the folks that Mohican in particular to us to say: ‘hey if Massachusetts doesn’t get its act together we are absolutely going to use our database in Massachusetts to push sports betting over the border in Connecticut where mobile will be available’.
“I do think the legislators in Massachusetts can look at that and see that they need to get something done. That being said, it’s always a glacial pace in this state, so if it dragged on until the end of the year and we didn’t have legal sports betting available until next football season by the time things got going, it wouldn’t be terribly surprising.”
Discussing the developments in Massachusetts, Co-Host, Dustin Gauker, commented: “There’s a lot of people in Massachusetts around the borders and not that far from any of these states that have some form of legal sports betting.
“I would look at that increasingly, from a Massachusetts point of view – what’s the point of not having it at this point? We always think that’s a relevant argument and sometimes it’s not but like if you’re really interested in this, you should look at what everybody else is doing around this.”
Source – Legal Sports Report YouTube Channel
