Mobile sports betting in Louisiana is live nearly three months after retail sportsbooks started opening.
Now comes the big question: just how busy will the new Louisiana sports betting market be? Those retail books took more than $67 million in bets over the first two months but that could be topped by just one weekend of mobile action.
Online LA sportsbooks launched with six operators that include bigger names in US sports betting:
- Barstool
- BetMGM
- BetRivers
- Caesars
- DraftKings
- FanDuel
Comparing LA to other recent sportsbook launches
There are a couple of recent launches that might give a good indication of how Louisiana should fare.
Let’s look at the launch of Virginia sportsbooks, which went live last January about a week earlier than Louisiana will. Virginia only had the two conference championship games in terms of NFL betting last year, same as Louisiana will have.
Virginia posted $59.9 million in handle and $3.6 million in revenue for those first 12 days in January. That’s with only two sportsbooks live for the conference championship games, DraftKings and FanDuel. BetMGM and BetRivers later launched with five days remaining in the month.
Elsewhere in US sportsbook starts
- Tennessee sportsbooks were in their third full month of operations last January when there were four weekends of football. Its four sportsbooks reported $211.3 million in handle and $20.9 million in revenue. A quarter of that action is $52.8 million in handle and $5.2 million in revenue.
- Arizona sportsbooks launched Sept. 9 with $291.2 million in handle and $31.2 million in revenue to show for it. That launch involved just three weekends of NFL football but they were full slates of regular-season games.
- Of course, none of those launches compare to the first weekend of mobile New York sports betting. The first four operators live combined for more than $150 million in handle over the first Saturday and Sunday.
What about Louisiana sports betting?
Louisiana is the smallest of the four states by population. Its nearly 4.7 million residents is roughly a quarter of New York and a little more than half of Virginia. Arizona and Tennessee are a bit closer, with 7.2 million people in Arizona and 6.9 million in Tennessee.
There is a wild card, though: Texas. The casinos in Lake Charles, Louisiana, exist because of Houston and Texas‘s lack of gambling. No doubt some of those 29.1 million Texans will want in on the legal betting action as well.
Beating New York’s debut numbers is very unlikely. Topping the nearly $60 million bet in Virginia and the almost $53 million average from Tennessee feels likely but it might be hard to get to the nearly ~$100 million weekly average from Arizona’s first month.
The biggest saving grace of the weekend, of course, is Joe Burrow. The former LSU quarterback remains a favorite throughout the state, meaning those six sportsbooks should be pretty exposed to the Cincinnati Bengals in this weekend’s AFC Championship Game on Sunday afternoon in Kansas City.
