Kentucky Inches Closer to Sports Betting Legislation / Super Bowl Data Coming Out

Over the past couple of years, the Kentucky legislature has made several attempts to pass sports betting legislation. At every turn to date, those efforts fail because of opposition in the House. The cure for that might ultimately come from the residents of the state.

In a recent poll done by Public Opinion Strategies (POS), 500 Kentucky residents were asked if they supported the legalization of sports betting in the state. The results were as follows:

• 65% said yes, 26% said no, and 9% were undecided
  
• 68% of registered Democrat voters said yes
  
• 58% of registered Republican voters said yes
  
• 81% of registered independents voters said yes
  

Sports betting does have the support of most House Democrats and Democrat Gov. Andy Beshear. Since the House currently sits with 75 GOP members and 25 Democrats, it’s clear sports betting legislation is failing to get enough support from state conservatives.

Recent efforts to get a bill through have been spearheaded by Rep. Adam Koenig, obviously to no avail. Still, he seems committed to trying again. Of course, time is running out with all new bills due by Match 1, 2022. The last day of the current Congressional session is April 14, 2022. This is what Koenig told reporters:

“As this poll shows, legalizing sports wagering in Kentucky is wildly popular. In addition, the poll shows that it is a political plus for candidates. I’ll be filing the bill soon and hope we will be able to wager next year on my hometown Bengals when they return to the Super Bowl!”

Record Super Bowl Betting Numbers are Spilling Out of Multiple States

It’s should come as no surprise that the betting on this year’s Super Bowl is smashing numbers from one state to the next. By the time the smoke clears and all numbers have been reported, aggregate legal mobile Super Bowl betting should come in well above the $1.0 billion mark. Also, analysts believe that over $7.0 billion may have been wagered on the Super Bowl from all sources, legal and illegal.

According to GeoComply, the group responsible for monitoring online sports betting in the U.S., more than 80 million individual sports betting transactions were recorded over the entire Super Bowl weekend. That’s double the number of transactions recorded last year. Also, wagers were recorded from more than 5.6 million individual wagering accounts. That represents an astounding increase of 95% over last year’s number.

In the coming weeks, all of the numbers should become public. However, several top states have already reported numbers. In Nevada, approximately $180 million was wagered on the Big Game. That represents an increase of 32% over last year. It also converted into gross revenue of over $15 million, a hold rate of over 8%. In New Jersey, around $144 million was wagered on the game, an increase of 20% over last year.

The industry is waiting in anticipation of the numbers coming out of New York.