Sports Betting Launches in Maryland While Several States Announce Big Revenue for October

It was two years in the making. In November of 2020, Maryland voters gave the green light for legislators to start crafting sports betting legislation. Earlier in the year, retail sports betting outlets in retail casinos were given the ability to start taking sports bets. However, it was online/mobile sports betting that the state’s residents were really eyeing.

Effective November 23, 2022, the mobile sports betting dream became a reality as the Maryland Gaming Commission (MGC) said everything was good to go. It’s noteworthy that the MGA requested and got a soft launch on Monday and Tuesday (November 21 & 22) with several major mobile sports betting operators participation. With everything going as planned during the soft launch, the mobile betting windows opened on Wednesday in the early morning hours.

Officially, seven (7) licensed mobile operators sprung into action. The list of participants includes:

• BetMGM
  
• BetRivers
  
• Caesars Entertainment
  
• DraftKings
  
• FanDuel
  
• Penn Entertainment
  
• PointsBet

Technically, ten (10) mobile sports betting licenses have been approved by the MGC. However, three (3) licensees have decided to launch at a later date, perhaps in the near future. Those three operators are Betfred, betParx, and Fanatics.

Maryland residents are welcome to join any of these sites. In fact, each operator has posted a welcome bonus offer to draw new customers. However, there is a catch with these bonuses. The bonuses will not be made available to residents of other states who decide to travel to Maryland for the purpose of opening a mobile betting account. Said customers will be required to be within the state of Maryland’s legal boundaries when placing bets. Geo-tracking software is being used to confirm customer locations.

Several States Announce Big Earnings for October 2022

While sports betting in Maryland is just getting underway, operators in several neighboring states have been taking retail and or mobile sports bets for a while now. In fact, three major sports betting states announced October 2022 handle and revenue this week. That would include Indiana, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Starting with Indiana, the Indiana Gaming Commission was proud to announce that the state’s gross sports betting revenue for October came in at a robust $207.6 million. That represents a 14% increase over the gross revenue reported in October 2019. It’s noteworthy that the Summer of 2019 was when Indiana sports betting operators started taking legal wagers.

Like Indiana, sports betting started in earnest in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In New Jersey, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement announced that gaming revenue in October from all sources total over $445 million, a slight decrease from October 2021. Online casinos and sportsbooks accounted for $147.2 million of that gross revenue.

In Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board announced that online casino and sports betting operations brought in slightly over $450 million in gross revenue, beating the $425 million reported in October 2021. Of that October 2022 number, online sportsbooks and casinos account for $93.2 of the total. For what it’s worth, October’s sports betting handle came in at just under $800 million.