The first weekend of online sports betting in Maryland looks like it was a busy one, as activity in the Old Line State blew past that of more mature wagering markets.
GeoComply Solutions Inc., which helps the operators of online sports betting sites to determine the location of users, said on Monday that 16.5 million geolocation transactions were recorded in Maryland from the mobile launch last Wednesday morning until the end of the day on Sunday.
Vancouver-based GeoComply reported that this was almost double the number of transactions in nearby Virginia, which had 8.5 million geolocation checks. It was also a good deal more than similarly-sized states with legal sports betting, such as Colorado, where just 3.8 million transactions were recorded over the same period.
GeoComply, a technology company, said 477,365 unique accounts generated the past week's activity in Maryland, including 3.7 million geolocation transactions on Thanksgiving Day.
“A strong start for the regulated market delivers on the promise of new revenues and consumer protections,” GeoComply’s senior vice president of compliance, Lindsay Slader, said in a press release. “Marylanders will continue to ditch illegal offshore sportsbooks for the security of legal, regulated operators that provide player safeguards and tax dollars for the state, just as lawmakers intended.”
It was a great first weekend for Maryland sports betting - delivering on the promise of new education funds and consumer protections.
— GeoComply (@GeoComply) November 28, 2022
Maryland’s Thanksgiving launch saw 16.5m geolocation transactions, almost double neighboring Virginia. pic.twitter.com/GcAOUs44lV
The formal launch of online sports betting in Maryland last Wednesday allowed seven online sportsbooks to start taking bets in bulk from the public. More operators will enter the state’s mobile sports betting market in the weeks to come, which will be in addition to the in-person event wagering already going on at casinos and other brick-and-mortar facilities in Maryland.
Maryland’s timing for the mobile launch, while it came more than two years after the state’s voters approved legal sports betting in a referendum, will still allow punters to wager on a good chunk of the NFL regular season and playoffs.
However, the long lag time for mobile sports betting in Maryland might partly explain the boom in demand when it was finally allowed.
“From the moment Maryland launched, betting surged throughout Thanksgiving weekend with local NFL teams in action, big-time college football matchups, a full round of NBA and college basketball, plus the soccer World Cup in Qatar,” GeoComply said. “Geolocation traffic for Maryland’s Thanksgiving launch was almost double neighboring Virginia and more than four times that of similarly-sized Colorado. Its 16.5m Thanksgiving transactions were also far in excess of Indiana and Tennessee, and not far off the 17.1m in the mature market of New Jersey, which has a far bigger population than Maryland.”
