Ohio had 2nd most activity for Super Bowl LVII betting
More than a million in state got in on the gambling for big game.
Many southwest Ohioans partook in Sunday’s flurry of wagers on Super Bowl LVII, the first NFL championship game in Ohio’s legal sports betting era.
Geocomply, a company trusted to ensure user’s geolocation compliance for all 16 of Ohio’s sportsbooks and the bulk of betting partners across the country, completed more than 100 million geolocation checks Sunday in 23 different states. Ohio had the second most activity (12.6 million checks) and the most users (1.1 million unique accounts) in the country.
CEO Anna Sainsbury said Ohio’s activity surrounding the game was proof of successful policy by Ohio’s Legislature, which passed the framework to regulate an Ohio sports betting market in December 2021 before markets opened at the start of 2023.
“Super Bowl LVII was a record-breaking event for Ohio’s brand-new sports betting market. Geocomply data reveals that Ohioans embraced their newfound ability to legally bet on the Super Bowl,” Sainsbury said. “Ohio’s new market is working just as lawmakers intended. It provides new protections for consumers and will deliver meaningful revenue to the state. Ohio’s competitive environment and strong regulatory oversight make it a model state for the sports betting industry.”
Ohio, along with Arkansas, Kansas and Maryland, opened its sports betting market in the time since last year’s Super Bowl — one of several factors that increased the amount of activity Geocomply monitored over Super Bowl weekend. The company said it saw a 25% increase in activity from last year’s championship.
A map the company created to show where users attempted to access Ohio sportsbooks from the start of Sunday until the game’s final whistle shows large hotspots in Cincinnati and Dayton, with betting activity concentrated along Interstate 75, tracing up through Butler County.
Southwest Ohio was an early hotspot for Ohio’s betting market. Hamilton County registered over 28.3 million transactions as Cincinnati became a haven for Northern Kentucky bettors to access the nearest legal sportsbook. The market received firm interest locally, too, as Geocomply recorded 5.2 million geolocation checks across 154,000 unique player accounts in Butler County’s borders in January, according to Geocomply spokesperson John Pappas.
At a daily rate, prospective bettors in Butler County alone had their location checked by Geocomply about 167,742 times a day in January. Each account recorded in the county was checked about 34 times over the course of the month.