Louisiana online sports betting went live Friday, January 28, just in time for the state’s sportsbook operators to write action on the NFL conference championships and Super Bowl 56. During its first weekend, Louisiana saw sports betting activity that surpassed New York‘s first weekend on a per capita basis. From launch to the end of Championship Sunday’s games, GeoComply recorded over 3.4 million geolocation transactions.
While that’s a fraction of New York’s 17 million transactions, Louisiana bettors, per capita, were slightly more engaged than New Yorkers over their first weekend of legal online sports betting.
According to a press release from GeoComply, a company that helps sportsbooks track their customers, the number of unique players in Louisiana sports betting’s first 36 hours represented 3.6% of Louisiana’s adult population. In contrast, New York’s unique players represented 3.3% of its adult population during its opening weekend.
Louisiana ranked eighth in GeoComply’s transaction volumes during its opening weekend. Its first weekend saw more transaction volume than Indiana, Tennessee, and Colorado. It was a strong showing for Louisiana’s first weekend of mobile sports betting.
Louisiana Sports Betting’s Future
Louisiana sports betting seemed to fit into the state’s existing gambling structure. According to GeoComply’s press release, 68% of its transaction volumes occurred within the southeastern section of the state, encompassing Baton Rouge and New Orleans. These were major gambling centers with casinos and riverboats long before sports betting was legalized.
It’s unsurprising to see this part of Louisiana take so quickly to sports betting. It contained a population of new sports bettors that already knew how to gamble. A fair number of them had likely bet sports with bookies, offshore accounts, or in Las Vegas before sports betting was legal in Louisiana.
Louisiana’s gambling culture may also help explain why the state showed such high engagement figures despite nine of its 64 parishes choosing not to legalize mobile sports betting. The sports betting activity in the southeast compensated for the largely northern anti-sports betting parishes.
Louisiana won’t generate the large sports betting handle and revenue a state like New York will. But the appetite for sports betting seems just as high among Louisianans.