Sports betting gets underway in Arizona
PHOENIX – Arizona’s first sports betting operations officially opened for business Thursday in time for the start of the NFL season, with live wagers taken on college and professional sports online and at two retail locations in Phoenix.
Taking in-person bets in the morning were the FanDuel Sportsbook at the downtown Phoenix arena where the Phoenix Suns play and temporary betting windows just down the street at the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Chase Field run by Caesars Entertainment. Several companies also began accepting online bets.
“Used to go to Vegas to do this,” said a pumped up Emil Stefan, 59, after placing a bet at the Caesers window. “This saves us a lot of money, time and fuel to do it here.”
The betting windows were made possible by a new law enacted by the Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey last spring. Gambling, other than old-school contests like Bingo run for charities, was banned outside of casinos run by Native American tribes before the law was passed.
Arizona joins more than half the states in allowing betting on sports, just three years after it was allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The state hopes to pull in tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue from legalized gambling.
It’s likely to be lucrative for the teams and gambling companies as well, some of which aggressively advertised on television and social media before Thursday’s launch.
The governor’s office negotiated new agreements with the tribes to allow betting on live and fantasy sports.