Hoboken: There’s an app for that
A wall of big-screen televisions, with couches and plush chairs set up just feet away. Beer bottles clanking. The smell of buffalo wings. And above the din, cheers for random NFL games bounced around the corners.
No, it’s not a sportsbook in Las Vegas. It’s Pilsener Haus & Biergarten in Hoboken, where DraftKings threw a party on the first football Sunday of the fall. With the recent legalization of sports betting in New Jersey, hundreds of people were on their phones placing money on everything from futures to very specific in-game wagers.
Like Sidney Mandel, a 32-yearold from North Jersey, who put a couple bucks on the Colts to beat the Bengals — and he did it 10 minutes into the first quarter. As the game went on, there was a buyout number for his bet that fluctuated with each play.
It is a new age of sports gambling, indeed.
“I never thought I’d see the day it was legal,” said Mandel, who was clad in his beat-up Jets jersey and set up with his laptop and phone on a table like a small work station. Before New Jersey passed the new law in June, Mandel placed sports bets like many others — with a shady, offshore account that he said once walked away with $15,000 of his money. But now, everything is a lot easier and a lot safer.
“The fact that it’s legal is a big deal,” Mandel said. “With DraftKings, they’re reasonable, thankfully, and they can be held accountable.”
Somewhat surprisingly, DraftKings got out in front of this new market, segueing from a daily fantasy program to a full-on sports book. The app rolled out just over a month ago and has GPS positioning to within 30 feet of your location, meaning if someone is in a state where sports betting isn’t legal — like across the Hudson River in New York — then the bet can’t go through.
But thus far, even in the sporting lull that is late summer, the company said it has received more than 1 million sports bets — not includ- ing daily fantasy — with no slowdown in sight.
“We’re excited about the promise of it,” DraftKings chief business officer, Ezra Kucharz, said about the possibility of being in front of the market for the time when it might become legal on the federal level. “We are cautiously optimistic. But for now, it’s on a state-bystate basis.”
There are nine states that still have not cleared sports betting, but it sure seems like once they see the success — as in tax revenue — in states like New Jersey, they all will fall in line. West Virginia, for one, is allowing reciprocity from those with a gambling license in New Jersey, watching to see how much revenue it can bring.
The daily fantasy is still a big part of DraftKings business, and it has created so many games each day which helps churn the money and give the DraftKings its cut. With the separate sports book app, the business has already expanded exponentially. Eventually, others are going to try to cut a big chunk out of the market, including MGM, the huge casino company. But the market as a whole is certainly on the upswing.
“As of now,” Kucharz said, “it is exceeding our initial expectations.”