April Sports Betting A Mystery In Nevada During Coronavirus

Nevada redacted online sports betting and poker revenues from its April gaming revenue report.
This was done in accordance with a state law protecting the privacy of individual companies’ finances—World Series of Poker was the only online poker company to report revenue.
Total online gaming revenues were only $3.6 million. Even if sports betting accounted for the vast majority of that, it would be a disappointing total.
Unless Nevada removes its in-person registration requirement for online sports betting, its mobile betting revenues will suffer.

LAS VEGAS – Last week, Nevada was scheduled to release a summary of its gaming revenues from April, but the report it released was heavily redacted to remove sports betting revenue figures.

All Nevada casinos have been closed since mid-March because of the coronavirus pandemic, so the only gaming revenues in April came from online sports betting and poker. The Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) reported $3.6 million in total revenue, but the exact split is unclear.

The issue seems to stem from a state law requiring the NGCB not to report financial information on any single operator. Nevada has two licensed online poker companies, but only one of them (World Series of Poker) reported gaming revenue from April.

Because WSOP’s revenues could easily be deduced by subtracting online sport betting revenues from total online gaming revenues, the NGCB elected to redact both.

Even still, it can be inferred that it was a poor month of performance for Nevada sportsbooks. Prior to COVID-19 Nevada sportsbooks were averaging $496.9 million in monthly handle and $29.1 million in revenue.

Full sports betting revenue figures from April should be included in July with the release of a three-month report for April, May, and June.

Nevada Seeks To Address Mobile Sports Betting Problem

Nevada is being passed by New Jersey as the top sports betting state, and it is largely a product of Nevada’s lackluster mobile sports betting market. While mobile betting accounts for nearly 90% of New Jersey’s sports betting revenues, it accounts for less than 50% of Nevada’s.

The Nevada Gaming Commission is going to discuss removing at least one of the major roadblocks to mobile betting—the restriction on electronic financial transfers to games or gaming devices directly from bank accounts and credit/debit cards.

Even if this restriction is successfully changed, Nevada’s biggest challenge to mobile betting revenues will be its requirement of in-person registration for all mobile sports bettors.

There doesn’t appear to be any plan to nix the in-person registration requirement, so Nevada’s mobile sports betting revenues will likely continue to lag severely behind other states like New Jersey and Pennsylvania—both of which offer remote registration.

A handful of casino sportsbooks have been offering drive-through registration and deposits, that’s still a lot to ask during a global pandemic.

Nevada sportsbooks won’t be able to compete financially with those in remote registration states until this restriction is removed, and Nevada needs every dollar it can get right now.

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Carter Floyd

With a dual background in English and sports performance and business analytics, Carter aims to write stories that both engage and inform the reader. He prides himself on his ability to interweave empirical data and traditional narrative storytelling. When he isn’t keeping readers up to date on the latest sports betting legal news, he’s banging his head against a wall regretting his decision to be a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan.