Sports betting just days, clicks away
All bets are on.
The New York State Gaming Commission has greenlighted mobile and online sports betting across the state as early as Saturday.
Four sports books have been authorized to go online at 9 a.m., bringing New York on board as the biggest state to launch online betting since 2018 when the Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, a 1992 federal law that restricted all but a handful of states from legalizing sports gambling.
New York has had in-person sports betting since 2019 but has generated a paltry $3.7 million in tax revenue at its four in-person sportsbooks, all of which are at least an hour from New York City.
The approval comes just in time for bettors to place wagers on games for the last week of the NFL season, several of which are scheduled on Saturday, not to mention the playoffs and the Super Bowl in the weeks after that.
The big winners were Caesars Sportsbook, DraftKings, FanDuel, and Rush Street Interactive, which were approved to go live because they all have existing partnerships in place with New York casinos.
State elected officials have estimated it could bring in up to $500 million in annual tax revenues.
Democratic state Sen. Joseph Addabbo Jr., a longtime advocate for legal sports gambling, called the announcement “great news for New York in terms of revenue, new funding for education, addiction programs and youth sports, as well as new jobs.”
Currently, gamblers can only place sports bets at upstate casinos. To get around the inconvenience, many New Yorkers launch local accounts and cross the border to place bets in New Jersey, which had challenged the federal law overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Since then, about half of U.S. states have implemented some form of legal sports gambling.
New York has seen neighboring New Jersey and other nearby states, most recently Connecticut, implement sports betting laws that lured away gamblers — and revenue.
Meanwhile, New Jersey has surpassed Nevada — home to gambling meccas Las Vegas and Reno — as the top sports betting market in the U.S.
Through the end of November, the Garden State’s nine casinos and the three horse tracks that take sports bets have taken nearly $10 billion in wagers, including online wagers.
Industry experts have estimated as much as 25% to 30% of sports bets in New Jersey are placed by New York residents.
Connecticut began accepting sports wagers in October, and Pennsylvania has had legal sports betting since late 2018.
The approval also includes a provision for up to $6 million in annual funding for gambling addiction programs. Youth sport programs will be created and funded annually at $5 million.
In April 2021, New York lawmakers approved a $212 billion deal that legalized mobile sports betting and set a tentative pre-Super Bowl launch date.
Then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the bill into law, but not before he questioned whether approving it would require a change to the state’s constitution, hesitation which critics said cost the state millions of dollars in tax revenue.