Las Vegas remains March Madness mecca for sports bettors, despite expansion of online outlets
At the historic theater where Elvis Presley performed more than 600 times during his famed Las Vegas residency, sellout crowds packed inside paid up to $2,500 per ticket for VIP access to March Madness.
The event — and others like it along The Strip — showed despite the billions of dollars wagered across the nation through expanding online sports betting, Las Vegas still has a timeless, Elvis-like ability to draw massive attention.
While chatting with his customers, who stood inbetting lines at casino windows and entered bets on their mobile apps, SuperBook Vice President Jay Kornegay said a prevailing theme emerged.
“They all spoke of how they insisted on making it out here for this event because there’s nothing else like it,” Kornegay said. “There are some great venues across the country to watch a game.
“But there’s still nothing like Las Vegas.”
Kornegay crunched numbers measuring the surge. He expects the first week of March Madness betting this year to exceed what the SuperBook produced even in the days before legalized mobile sports betting in 2017.
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One factor is Americans’ interest in reuniting with friends and family following the COVID-19 shutdown of the 2020 NCAA basketball tournaments and ongoing restrictions.
The Los Angeles Rams’ Super Bowl 56 triumph over the Cincinnati Bengals last month powerfully illustrated sports bettors do not balk at returning to Las Vegas even with widespread, legal access to betting on their phones.
Nevada regulators reported its sportsbooks accepted a record $179.8 million in Super Bowl bets this year, shattering the over $158 million bet on the 2018 Super Bowl.
The state reported an impressive 8.6% profit from the game.
And while likely more than half of the Super Bowl betting came through mobile devices — 65% of sports bets in Nevada last year were placed online — a wealth of action belongs to tourists now able to avoid the betting-window lines.
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