It might be too early to confirm just yet, but the early indications are that betting on the 2023 Super Bowl final broke all kinds of records when it comes to sports gambling.
What we know so far
Some takeaways we already have from Sunday’s match are that FanDuel said it accepted 50,000 bets a minute at its peak. The sportsbook also said it averaged two million users on its betting platform throughout the Super Bowl showdown.
BetMGM claimed it was their most successful Super Bowl ever. The Vegas-based sportsbook said through a combination of its nine retail shops and the BetMGM app, it had its highest Super Bowl handle in company history. The betting giant also announced that Super Bowl 57 was their most bet on a (single) match or sporting event ever.
As well as the overall amount staked on the Super Bowl, there were also some extraordinary single bets placed. BetMGM reported that they took one bet of half a million dollars on the Kansas City Chiefs. They reported having to pay out $525,000 to the winner of the bet.
WE ARE SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS !!!! pic.twitter.com/ws26JGa3xo
— Kansas City Chiefs (@Chiefs) February 13, 2023
Drake likes a bet
And it wasn’t just anonymous individuals wagering heavily on the event. Canadian rapper Drake is reported to have placed numerous bets on the match, amounting to the best part of $1 million.
Drake is betting on the Chiefs for the Super Bowl 👀 pic.twitter.com/7cTNTZcB36
— Action Network (@ActionNetworkHQ) February 9, 2023
Drake is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to betting on the Super Bowl in Canada. The figures quoted in this article don’t include gambling figures from north of the border. It’s well known that Canadians love the Super Bowl and like to bet on it as much as their American counterparts. Back in 2018, a survey in Canada found that up to two-thirds of the nation’s adults had placed a bet in the previous 12 months, buying lottery tickets accounted for 52%. As a result of the betting boom in Canada, numerous big gambling brands have now entered the marketplace. Websites like Betminded.com review the top sportsbooks and online casinos for Canadian players to use, helping bettors be aware of the most suitable option for them based on a range of factors such as welcome bonuses, customer service quality, and the range of payment methods. This is vitally important as more and more brands enter the Canadian marketplace, making it a highly competitive industry.
Super Bowl 57: The first to be played in a legal gambling state
The Super Bowl 57 match itself set a record, as it was the first time the match was played in a state where sports betting has been legalized. This could be reflective of how times are now changing in the USA.
The match was also the first time the states of Kansas, Maryland, and Ohio allowed online sports betting on the Super Bowl. All this adds to why the American Gaming Association (AGA) predicted pre-match that over 50 million adults would wager (both legally and illegally) around $16 billion on the match, as reported by Thesportsgeek.com.
And as more and more states legalize online sports betting, the number of bets placed is only set to rise in future years. This is quite staggering, considering figures previously reported on Valiantceo.com, which show the US economy has slowed at times over recent years.
The sheer amount of betting activity around the Super Bowl highlights how large the industry has become in recent years and it looks like this is only set to continue growing with records continuously being broken.
