New Data Confirms NV Mobile Sports Betting Lags Behind NJ

• The Nevada Gaming Control Board added a mobile sports betting section to its January 2020 financial report.
• The report indicates that its mobile betting industry lags far behind that of New Jersey.
• Because of its superior mobile betting, New Jersey’s sports betting industry will likely surpass Nevada in 2020.

LAS VEGAS – On its monthly revenue report for January 2020, the Nevada Gaming Control Board added a separate category for mobile sports betting revenue, which provided a new opportunity to compare Nevada’s online sports betting industry with that of other states.

Despite Nevada having enjoyed legal sports betting, including legal online sports betting, for decades, its mobile betting industry lags markedly behind New Jersey.

New Jersey sportsbooks earned a total of $53.6 million in January, with $46.6 million of that coming from mobile bets. Nevada finished with a much lighter total of $11.2 million in mobile betting revenue out of a total of $20.2 million in total revenue for the month.

In other words, 87.1% of New Jersey’s total sports betting revenue comes from mobile users, whereas that number is only 55.7% for Nevada.

In terms of handle, the difference is even more pronounced, as sportsbooks in New Jersey handled an estimated $224.6 million more mobile wagers than Nevada.

Why Does Mobile Betting Matter?

One of Nevada’s primary concerns with the repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was that its sportsbooks would be losing their monopoly over the industry and another state would take up the mantle as the sports betting capital of the United States.

While Nevada remained the unquestioned industry leader in 2019, New Jersey made strong fiscal inroads largely by capitalizing on a lucrative mobile betting market of New York commuters and tourists.

Nevada wants to retain its supremacy over the sports betting world, but sports betting in New Jersey has far outpaced Nevada in terms of adapting to the needs of the modern sports bettor.

Only 50 of 440 licensed sportsbooks in Nevada offer mobile betting, and even those that do offer it require that consumers register a mobile account in-person at a casino before they can place bets.

The goal is understandable—entice consumers to visit a casino and then entice them into doing something more profitable than sports betting—but it is causing Nevada to quickly lose its stranglehold on the market.

Las Vegas sportsbooks will likely need to perform a thorough cost-benefit analysis to determine whether it is more valuable to maintain their dominance over the sports betting market or to sacrifice that in exchange for potentially enticing more players to participate in casino games with higher profit margins.

Even accounting for January’s unsustainable hold rate of nearly 10%, New Jersey is likely to pass Nevada in both sports betting handle and revenue in 2020.

News tags: Las Vegas | Nevada | Nevada Gaming | Nevada Mobile Betting | New Jersey | PASPA