Strong March Madness Results
March Madness is the NCAA college basketball championship tournament that takes place every March.
It is always a popular betting event in Nevada and this year’s event was the first since the federal ban on sports betting was struck down by the US Supreme Court. Therefore, those in the industry were watching with keen interest to see how the betting figures would stack up.
New Jersey saw $106m (£82m) in bets on the March Madness event, which is three times greater than the total bet on this year’s Super Bowl. The figures were released by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement during a sports betting conference.
New Jersey sportsbooks took in almost $35m (£27m) in bets on the Super Bowl in February. The Super Bowl was not very good for those sportsbooks, as they lost $4.5m (£3.5m) when the New England Patriots won. Over 75% of bets were in favor of the Patriots.
March Madness betting brought profits of $10.8 (£8.4m) to New Jersey sportsbooks. A lot of the state’s sportsbooks hit monthly records for revenues in March.
A Good Month
In total, $372m (£288m) in sports bets was made in March, so March Madness accounted for 28.5% of the total. The profit for the sportsbooks on the NCAA tournament was a very decent 10.2%.
Of that total, $106m (£82m) was bet on March Madness and over $80m (£62m) of that came through online sportsbooks. This has been a regular trend in New Jersey, with the vast majority of people preferring to bet online from the comfort of their own homes.
This is why some states are struggling to hit their sports betting revenue estimates. They do not have mobile sports betting and are therefore missing a significant portion of the overall market for sports betting.
More than $2.3bn (£1.8m) in sports bets has been placed in New Jersey since it became legal ten months ago.
Rivaling Nevada
Nevada is well within the sights of New Jersey’s sports betting sector. The state is slowly but surely catching up to the traditional king of sports betting. In January, the New Jersey sportsbooks even had greater sports betting revenues than Nevada, with profits of $18.8m (£14.6m) versus $14.6m (£11.3m).
However, Nevada broke the all-time record for the highest single month sports betting intake during March, with almost $600m (£465m). This was largely due to March Madness.
New Jersey will not stop chasing Nevada to become the king of sports betting. At the recent Betting on Sports America conference that recently took place, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said that his state’s sports betting sector could “overtake Nevada as early as next year.”