Legal sports betting has arrived in Iowa.
Eight casinos are primed to open sportsbooks at noon Thursday, the day legal Iowa sports betting starts in the state. Of those, seven are expected to offer mobile wagering.
Brian Ohorilko, administrator for the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission, told Legal Sports Report the following casinos are preparing to launch sportsbooks on opening day:
- PrairieMeadows
- Lakeside
- Isle Waterloo
- Isle Bettendorf
- Rhythm City
- Riverside
- Ameristar Council Bluffs
- Catfish Bend
“No one as we sit here today has received authorization to go live, but those are the eight operators that I believe will be ready to go,” Ohorilko said.
The four William Hill properties (Prairie, Lakeside, the Isles) and three using Bet.Works as an online partner (Riverside, Rhythm and Grand Falls) are on track to start mobile Iowa sports betting.
Sportsradar will provide official NFL data to sportsbooks in a recently expanded partnership.
Live audiovisual NFL game feeds also will be supplied to sportsbooks outside of the U.S., in select international markets.
After decades of the NFL strongly opposing the sports betting industry, the agreement with Sportradar, a prominent sports data provider, marks a significant shift in the NFL’s position at the league level. Multiple teams have done deals with casinos with sportsbooks, and Caesars Entertainment became the NFL’s first official casino partner earlier this year. Now, the NFL is licensing its data and game feeds to bookmakers.
Sportradar serves more than 500 sportsbooks and now is an official partner of all four major professional U.S. sports leagues: the NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball and the NFL.
The Baltimore Orioles won as +420 underdogs against the Justin Verlander-led Houston Astros.
The Astros, the consensus World Series favorites, were one of the largest single-game favorites ever. They closed as -460 favorites at Caesars Sportsbook but could be found as high as -550 favorites at Station Casinos’ sportsbooks in Nevada.
Houston is the ninth favorite of -400 or greater since 2005 and only the second to lose, joining the 2007 Twins. The Dodgers were -485 favorites against the Atlanta Braves in 2016.
The high price on the Astros’ money line scared away many bettors at Caesars, where 89% of the tickets and 97% of the money was on the underdog Orioles.
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