News

Massachusetts online sports betting off to a hot start

14 March 2023
By Jarrod LeBlanc

While there’s still a little over a month until the Boston Marathon, residents of the Bay State are off and running with regulated online sports betting. So much so, that Massachusetts, since it began allowing legalized sports wagering last Friday, 10 March, at 10 a.m. sprinted past similar size states and ranked fifth overall out of all of the U.S. states that offer regulated mobile sports gambling over the weekend.

Residents of the Bay State recorded 8.1 million geolocations from 406,400 unique accounts through operators DraftKings, Caesars Sportsbook, BetMGM, WynnBET, Barstool Sportsbook and FanDuel from Friday morning through Sunday, according to a press release from GeoComply, a fraud and risk solutions provider. These numbers only trailed New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, which all have much larger populations.

When looking at states of similar sizes, Massachusetts with a population of seven million crushed the competition. Virginia, Arizona, Indiana and Maryland, which led the way of these four states, each only recorded 5.2 million geolocations and 187,507 unique accounts at the most.

Also of note, according to its press release, GeoComply prevented over 5,000 transactions from devices or accounts with a known history of fraud.

Initially nine operators received approval from the Massachusetts Gaming Commission in February; however, betr is opting to hold off on its planned launch until later this month, while BallyBet and Fanatics are waiting to launch until May.

PointsBet USA, which originally appeared on the list of suitable operators by the MGC, withdrew its application from consideration for the Bay State three weeks ago.

The online sports betting opening weekend follows a similar strong showing from retail sports wagering which launched 31 January in the Bay State.

However, it hasn’t been without incident for retail sports wagering in Massachusetts as all three casinos – Encore Boston Harbor, Plainridge Park Casino, and MGM Springfield – are all alleged to have accepted bets on Bay State college sports, which is a violation of the gambling laws in Massachusetts. Both Encore Boston Harbor and Plainridge Park Casino are scheduled for their adjudicatory hearings today with the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. MGM Springfield’s hearing hasn’t been announced yet.