Bumper Super Bowl for Nevada sports operators

Sunday’s NFL Super Bowl – it’s fiftieth edition – proved as entertaining and spectacular as always, and the numbers released by the Nevada Gaming Control Board on the following day show that it was profitable for the 194 licensed sports betting operators in the Nevada monopoly as well.

The Board reported that gamblers lost more than $13 million to state sports books, the second-biggest bookie win in 10 years for a Super Bowl, after 2014, when Nevada sports books won nearly $20 million from gamblers as the Seattle Seahawks beat Denver 43-8.

This year’s outcome came from a combination of particularly high wagers and a game result that favoured the operators, the regulator revealed.

$132.5 million in wagers was [legally] placed with Nevada bookies, and punters lost 10.1 percent of that – the third-worst winning percentage for gamblers in a decade.

Back in 2007 when the Indiana Colts beat the Chicago Bears, operators made revenues of 13.9 percent on wagers of $93 million.

Nevada is the only state in the country where a full range of sports betting – and particularly single sports betting – is allowed under federal law.