When the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday, they weren’t the game’s only big winner. Thanks to an avalanche of wagers from across the country, the US-facing sports betting business was also a big winner, and its future looks equally bright.
According to GeoComply, the company that geo-locates and geo-fences betting activity in the United States, pre-Super Bowl betting surged to a rate of 14,500 a second in the moments before the game’s 6 p.m. (EST) kickoff. That number represents a surge of 23 percent over wagering on Super Bowl LVII. All that activity came from just over 8.5 million active accounts spread across the united States. According to GeoComply, 1.77 million of those accounts were only activated within the last week.
All the Super Bowl action was in line with trends that have impacted the US sports betting business all year; namely massive growth. Since the NFL season started back in September, US gaming operators have seen a surge of 13.7 million new accounts, up 28 percent from the 2022-2023 season.
In comments reported on by US News and World Report, Anna Sainsbury, CEO and co-founder of GeoComply commented on the Super Bowl sports betting surge saying, “The continued transition to the legal market set the stage for a historic first Super Bowl in Las Vegas, and the record-breaking results we saw did not disappoint.”
She went on to pitch the value of the regulated sports betting market adding, “Every year the legal market grows is good news for consumers and states and bad news for illegal offshore sportsbooks that become marginalised.”