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Nevada sports book operators say betting handle for Sunday’s Super Bowl, the single most popular event in US sports, could top last year’s record $119.4 million.
Bookmakers in the only state where single-game wagering is legal won $19.7 million on last year’s game, which pits the National Football League’s two conference winners in a contest for the championship. The Seattle Seahawks will play the New England Patriots in the 2nd February game, which will be staged in Phoenix, another factor that will benefit Nevada due to the proximity to Las Vegas.
Sports wagering in Nevada continues to grow, much to the dismay of New Jersey and other states hankering after a piece of the action and denied it under federal law. Advancements in mobile technologies and in-play betting have added to the growth. For the Super Bowl, hundreds of proposition wagers also enhance the attraction.
The Silver State set a single-month record of $535 million in betting handle in November, including a record $400.7 million wagered on college and professional football. When December and year-end numbers are released, additional records could be set, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
In the meantime, the debate over nationwide sports wagering smolders.
The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, passed by Congress in 1992, outlaws betting on sports in the US, with exceptions grandfathered in for the four states where it was legal at the time: Nevada and in limited, small-stakes forms in Delaware, Montana and Oregon. The act provided a one-year window for states wishing to legalize, but none did. It wasn’t until Atlantic City casino revenues began to plummet in the last decade that New Jersey decided to challenge PASPA as discriminatory, and the state has sought through legislation and repeated federal court challenges to overturn it, but without success and opposed in every instance by the professional sports leagues, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the US Justice Department.
Advocates for legalization argue that billions are bet illegally on sports anyway, fueling money laundering, tax evasion and other crimes, and last year, National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver broke ranks and spoke out in favor of legalization. “Sports betting should be brought out of the underground and into the sunlight,” he wrote in The New York Times.
Two New Jersey congressmen have since introduced federal legislation that would exempt the state from PASPA, but in Nevada, which might be expected to oppose any expansion beyond its markets, Congresswoman Dina Titus, whose district includes the Las Vegas Strip, says her research indicates the bills have no chance of passage.
“There appears to be little appetite for any expansion of sports betting at this time,” she told the Review-Journal, “I will continue to watch the bills, however,” she added, “and discuss their potential implications with leaders of the Nevada gaming community.”
