CONNECTICUT ONLINE SPORTS BETTING SHOWS PROMISING NUMBERS IN ITS SOFT LAUNCH LAST WEEK

Connecticut online sports betting has recently seen its soft launch. This soft launch appears to be successful for Rush Street Interactive and the Connecticut Lottery. This past Tuesday, Oct. 12, at noon, the Connecticut Lottery and Rush Street Interactive launched the PlaySugarHouse app. Within the first four hours, the app had reached its maximum number of players, which is 750.

The Connecticut Lottery President, Greg Smith, stated they had actually planned to reach out to bettors for this soft launch. However, before this could happen, they had organically reached the 750 player sign ups on the Kambi-powered PlaySugarHouse app. As of this writing, around 3,000 sports betting fans have signed up since the Friday before last. This is when account creation was allowed to begin.

On Tuesday, the three mobile Connecticut sportsbooks finished their soft launch. This is per the Department of Consumer Protection’s outline. Over the course of this past Tuesday and Wednesday, these 750 users had already bet over $60,000 on the app. But, this number does not take into account any free bets, which accounted for a good amount of bets placed on the app.

The smallest bet placed was ten cents, while the largest was almost $1,800. On average, bets tended to be around $45. The majority of the accounts have deposited funds. Some lucky winners have already begun to process withdrawals from their accounts.

Connecticut Lottery President Smith feels that these results have been a good test of the system so far. And, he feels that this shows very normal activity on the app. So, these results seem promising for Connecticut sports betting and its future.

The bets tended to be placed on major sports, as predicted. However, there were also bets placed on Russian table tennis as well as esports. We have yet to see data on the bets placed on the FanDuel Sportsbook and the DraftKings Sportsbook.

As of right now, The Connecticut Lottery is still awaiting the required approvals needed to be able to launch retail betting in the state of Connecticut. Currently, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun have opened temporary retail sportsbooks at their locations.

Openings will be happening in phases due to the huge effort required to open multiple retail sportsbooks at once and the supply issues for betting kiosks that the state is facing.

Three of the first venues are currently ready. They are: Winners location in New Haven as well as Bobby V’s locations in Windsor Locks and Stamford. All of three of these venues are owned by Sportech.

By the end of the month, an additional seven locations should be open. Rush Street Interactive and the Connecticut Lottery have their own marketing plans when it comes to both online and retail betting. The Connecticut Lottery is preparing to launch some marketing that is targeted in lottery retailers.

The marketing efforts that have already been made prior to the sports betting launch appears to have been pretty successful.

Written by Allie Nelson, our US Sports Betting Industry Expert. You can learn more about our author's expertise here.