Super Bowl betting sets records for sportsbooks

It was a record-breaking Super Bowl for sportsbooks as gamblers ponied up across the United States.

Super Bowl 57 was the first one to be played in a state where sports gambling is legal, and early data shows there was a lot of enthusiasm for betting on the big game.

GeoComply, a company that verifies the locations where gamblers are betting, saw 100 million sports-betting transactions this Super Bowl weekend, an increase of 25% over last year. In and around State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, more than 100,000 transactions were verified on Sunday.

FanDuel expected to handle more than 17 million Super Bowl bets. At its peak, the sportsbook told CNBC, it accepted 50,000 bets per second and averaged 2 million active users on its platform throughout the game.

The wagering was intense even in Las Vegas, the nation’s most mature sports betting market. MGM Resorts said it set a new company record for Nevada: the highest Super Bowl handle in history, combining the money bet in its nine retail sportsbooks on the Strip and bets placed through the BetMGM app.

“This was BetMGM’s most successful Super Bowl and most bet on single game sporting event ever,” the company told CNBC.

BetMGM took one bet for half a million dollars on the Kansas City Chiefs that paid out $525,000. Another bet $547,000 to win $437,000 on the over, which was 49.5 points. The teams combined to score 73 points.

At DraftKings, one bettor put $1.68 million on the Chiefs. That paid out a whopping $2.68 million.

Among a slew of prop bets that paid off was the “Octopus” — a player who scores a touchdown and immediately scores a two-point conversion, totaling eight points. Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts delivered on the longshot prop bet in the fourth quarter, for a payoff of +1,400.

For those viewers who bet on the color of the traditional Gatorade bath (which was not shown on TV this year), longshot purple was the winner at 9/1 odds. Only 10% of the money at BetMGM was on purple.

The American Gaming Association, the trade group representing the casino industry, projected a record 50.4 million American would wager $16 billion on this year’s Super Bowl, double last year’s estimate. That includes not only bets placed with legal sportsbooks, which AGA estimates at about $1 billion, but also wagers with unregulated, offshore sites; bookies; and social bets among friends or coworkers. If that proves true, that would be double last year’s estimates.

Already, sportsbooks are accepting wagers for next year’s Super Bowl, which, for the first time, will take place in America’s gambling capital – Las Vegas.

DraftKings has opened betting with the Chiefs at 6/1 odds.