There’s no mobile wagering allowed, but casinos in Upstate New York now have legal sports betting.
Rivers is the first of the eight Upstate New York sports betting lounges currently under development to open. The next is expected to be the one at Tioga Downs in Nichols, west of Binghamton in the Southern Tier — its opening is set for 2:30 p.m. Friday.
In the first month with online sports betting in Pennsylvania, 40 percent of the action was placed online.
And that happened with just one sportsbook app open all month —SugarHouse Sportsbook in PA— and two others (Parx and BetRivers) only open for about a week.
With the launch of PA online sports betting, the state set a new record for handle at more than$46.3 million. The best month to date had been March at $44.5 million, per PGCB numbers.
But those numbers come with a stark difference in the sports calendar. While March is one of the biggest months for betting — think college basketball and March Madness betting — June certainly is not. While the NBA Finals did take place, it’s one of the deader months on the calendar in terms of things to bet on.
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said he’s concerned about the mental health of student athletes with expanded legal sports betting.
“We’re seeing trends in the mental health area that should cause us all to pause before these ideas around specific event betting within college sports are allowed to take place,” he said. “And I’m talking about, for example, whether a field goal is made or missed, whether a 3-point try is successful. Is a pitched ball a strike or a ball?
“That pause should happen before any of these types of activities take place.”
He said mental health is an issue athletes now bring up in every meeting, replacing such near-universal student issues as limited campus parking.
“The perspectives on mental health represent not a ripple of change, but a wave of new reality, which faces all of us in intercollegiate athletics and higher education,” Sankey said.
Legalized sports gambling in some states — including in SEC country — also will be a new reality. A Supreme Court ruling in May 2018 cleared all 50 states to offer legal sports betting if they choose to.
Sankey’s take remains that “it may be ideal for us not to experience any expansion in sports gambling.”
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