Sports betting is legal, and it’s taking over the Super Bowl

By Case Keefer (contact)

Sunday, Feb. 12, 2023 | 2 a.m.

Sam Joffray, executive director of the Las Vegas Super Bowl Host Committee, hasn’t missed a Super Bowl in nearly 30 years and can remember stricter protocols in some areas from the earlier days.

One old rule that now feels particularly antiquated stipulated that NFL employees were forbidden from walking across a casino floor during the game week.

“For years and years, we couldn’t say NFL and gambling in the same sentence,” Joffray reflected at the Super Bowl 57 Media Center earlier this week.

Nowadays, hardly a sentence goes by during the lead-up to the Super Bowl without some tie-in to gambling, whether it be an advertisement or discussion of the point spread and proposition wagers. And the mere act of entering the famed radio row at the Super Bowl Media Center feels like walking across a casino floor.

The biggest sets in the room belong to sports-betting industry titans DraftKings and FanDuel. Caesars Sports, the largest sports betting operator in Nevada, also has an entire corner dedicated to its own programming.  

This year’s Super Bowl is the first in the history of the game to take place in a state with legalized sports wagering, and reminders are omnipresent. This will be the new norm for Super Bowls as the next two scheduled sites, Las Vegas in 2024 and New Orleans in 2025, are also gambling hubs.

Sports betting is now legal in 33 states and Washington, D.C. with no signs of its spread stopping. Florida, California and Texas, which figure to be in the regular Super Bowl rotation, are the biggest holdouts but it’s not inconceivable that legalization could happen in the years before they next host the NFL’s championship event.

“The proliferation of gambling-related media outlets is pretty stunning,” said Mike Palm, vice president of operations for Circa and Circa Sports. “We’ve come almost a 360 from these leagues not just an arm’s distance away from gambling but totally shunning it to now embracing it and figuring out how to make money off of it.”

Palm traveled to Super Bowl week for the first time in his career, and thought he knew what to expect regarding sports betting’s outsized presence. But he admitted it was even more ubiquitous than he imagined.

One of the only major national brands not found on radio row is BetMGM, and there’s a good reason: They’ve got their own setup at State Farm Stadium where the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles will be contested. BetMGM and the Arizona Cardinals partnered to build a sports book on site ahead of the state legalizing betting in 2021, and it figures to be packed leading up to kickoff today.

Most bets in Arizona, and nationwide, are now placed through mobile phone apps but the brick-and-mortar location will give fans a chance to bet over the counter or at kiosks pregame.

“I’m not going to say it’s the reason the deal with the Cardinals was done five years ago,” said Jason Scott, BetMGM’s vice president of trading. “But when we first started having conversations with the Cardinals about a partnership and what it would look like, we knew at that stage that the Super Bowl was scheduled to be here in ’23 and that was certainly something that incentivized us to go down that path.”

Business was up midway through Super Bowl week at BetMGM, and Scott said the game being in Arizona only had a little bit to do with the increase. A bigger reason: Both the Eagles and Chiefs come from states with legalized wagering — sort of.

“We’ve never had a team in the Super Bowl that originates from a state (with betting), and this year we have two with Pennsylvania and, I know, the Chiefs are technically Missouri but it’s close enough and easy enough to jump across the border to Kansas,” Scott said. “I think we’ve seen that. Gambling is very prevalent in both states, and there’s great enthusiasm.”

Philadelphia is a widespread 1.5-point favorite nationwide, but some sports books in Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey briefly jumped to -3 midweek because of bettors’ hometown bias. It’s safe to say none of the shops in Kansas ever climbed that high.

But middle America might be the only place where the Chiefs are taking the majority of the action. The split is about 60/40 in favor of the Eagles at BetMGM, according to Scott.

The only seven-figure wager on the game through Wednesday at BetMGM was on Philadelphia, with several other of the biggest bets also on that side. Palm reported a similar action split for Circa, which caters more to professional gamblers as opposed to the recreational masses of BetMGM and others.

“It’s been really steady Eagles’ action and the props have been Eagles heavy too,” Palm said. “That leads us to believe the number is not going back toward the Chiefs.”

Nevada sports books set a record with $179.8 million wagered on last year's Super Bowl, according to the state Gaming Control Board, and that’s only a drop in the bucket of the overall nationwide volume. The American Gaming Association’s annual Super Bowl projections call for a record $16 billion to be gambled this year, both legally and illegally, with 20% of the population betting on the game in one way or another.

And the numbers figure to skyrocket next year when the Super Bowl is in Las Vegas.

“Everything is bigger and better in Vegas,” Scott said. “If we’re talking about betting, it’s big this year but it goes to a new level next year. Vegas is a town built on gambling.”

Las Vegas may still be known as the sports betting capital, but it’s been surpassed in many areas. Software limitations mean there’s not nearly as many betting options as elsewhere in the country, including in Arizona.

Physical sports books can still be found in most casinos but they’re less inundated at arenas. In addition to the BetMGM shop at State Farm Stadium, FanDuel has a sports book at the Footprint Center, the home of the Phoenix Suns where Super Bowl Opening Night festivities were staged.

Two blocks down, Caesars has its own sports book at the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Chase Field. Perhaps kiosks and betting counters at stadiums are in Las Vegas’ future but there are none currently. Palm said Circa “would love” to get into T-Mobile Arena or potential new MLB or NBA venues eventually.

Sports betting may have once been a Las Vegas novelty, but this year’s Super Bowl shows more than ever that it’s transcended the niche. It’s now a mainstream pastime.  

“It’s pretty impressive,” Palm said. “It’s an interesting moment when you can walk to the Super Bowl, look up and find everybody that you can bet with while you’re here.”

Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or