Super Bowl LV Sets Sports Betting Record Despite Outages: Who Won And Lost?

With more states allowing legalized sports betting for the 2020 NFL season, it shouldn’t be too big of a surprise that Super Bowl LV saw record numbers of bets and betting handle across several states.

State Figures: Nevada led the way with $136.1 million bet on Super Bowl LV, according to LegalSportsBet. The figure was down 12% from last year possibly due to fewer people at physical casinos.

New Jersey reported $117.4 million in bets on the big game, a year-over-year increase of 116%.

Pennsylvania reported a betting handle of $53.6 million on Super Bowl LV, up 75% year-over-year.

The other states had much lower figures but most of them saw growth. Iowa grew from $6.5 million last year to $16.3 million this year. Mississippi went from $6.7 million last year to $8.0 million this year. Oregon went from $2 million last year to $3.5 million this year. Rhode Island went from $5.5 million last year to $6.5 million this year. Delaware saw a decline from $2.1 million last year to $1.9 million this year.

Some states allowed betting on the Super Bowl for the first time. Illinois reported $45.6 million in bets, with 93.7% of the figure coming from online bets. Tennessee had $15.4 million taken in bets on the Super Bowl. Colorado had a betting handle of $31.2 million on the Super Bowl.

Related Link: A Super Bowl LV Sports Betting Preview And The Best Prop Bets

Betting Outage: Software-as-a-service provider for the betting industry Kambi took blame for an outage before Super Bowl LV that caused technical issues for some providers, according to LegalSportsReport.

Kambi said it handled three times the number of transactions for this year’s Super Bowl compared to last year. One unnamed bet that had an extended number of outcomes became the third most popular bet and caused a backlog that slowed and stopped bets from being taken.

The delay and no one being able to bet for up to a half-hour on several sports betting apps could hurt Kambi and help a rival or lead to sports betting companies trying to own their own technology. DraftKings Inc DKNG, BetRivers, owned by Rush Street Interactive RSI and Barstool Sportsbook, owned by Penn National Gaming PENN were listed as Kambi customers.

DraftKings acquired SBTech as part of their SPAC merger and will be switching from Kambi to their own technology in the future.

Given its ownership of SBTech and the outages caused by Kambi, DraftKings could become a winner here with owning its own technology and could see increased demand for SBTech.

Another Winner: GAN Limited GAN is another company that could win due to the outages from Kambi for Super Bowl LV.

GAN reported a record of 14.6 million bets taken on Super Bowl LV, a year-over-year increase of 186%. The company saw all-time records before, during and after Super Bowl LV from its customers.

“GAN delivers uninterrupted technical performance with over 14 million bets processed on the day of Super Bowl LV,” the company said in a press release. GAN appears to take a stab at their rival Kambi with saying no interruptions were seen.

Benzinga’s Take: Looking at the early figures from Super Bowl LV shows strong demand for sports betting. The results could also show which companies could have been winners.

FanDuel is the leader in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The company reported some minor issues with its own technology, but the company didn't experience as long of outages as its rivals. The company could be the big winner from the big game.

DraftKings stands out as a winner with the strong figure reported from New Jersey and also the ownership of SBTech becoming a possible catalyst.

Penn National has its sportsbook in Pennsylvania, which saw strong figures, and Michigan, which will not break out revenue from the game.

BetRivers owner Rush Street Interactive stands out as a potential winner with its leading market share in Illinois. The strong figure from Illinois and the amount of bets wagered online could be a positive for the provider.