New York might already be the largest sports betting market in the country. The massive volume is also causing problems that accompany such massive volume.
NY sports betting generated 5.8 million geolocation pings in the first 12 hours after launch Saturday, per GeoComply. That was more than double the 2.3 million pings from second-place state Pennsylvania.
Even when adjusting for population, NY volumes were 64% higher. Geolocation pings can be bets or log-ins.
New York sports betting is big business
The Empire State followed up that debut Sunday with 17.2 million pings across the weekend.
Volumes from NYC’s five boroughs alone exceeded 8 million, which was larger than any other state in the US.
“A launch this size is historically unprecedented,” said GeoComply MD Lindsay Slader in a LinkedIn post. “Congratulations to our customers and the New York State Gaming Commission for the fast and furious start!”
Four of the nine licensed operators were live for the opening weekend:
Double-edged sword for Caesars?
Caesars said it took almost 1 million bets over the two days.
“The numbers were massive. We had almost a million individual bets taken,” said Caesars CEO Thomas Reeg on CNBC. “We knew New York sports bettors were a passionate group. They didn’t disappoint this weekend.”
Reeg said NY volumes were around nine times higher than Arizona when Caesars launched there in September.
NY sportsbook down
That avalanche of bets caused some problems, however.
Caesars suffered a couple of outages, and was down for around three hours at one point Sunday.
“When you have massive demand like we did, you see the pinch points in your system,” Reeg said. “Unfortunately we did not have flawless performance this weekend, and as a sports bettor myself I know how frustrating that can be.”
Caesars likely saw much of that volume because of its ad placement with NFL betting throughout Sunday telecasts.
Users also reported some issues with FanDuel and DraftKings on the Saturday.
