Can Someone Help North Carolina Figure Out Sports Betting?

You’ve been able to bet on sports legally in North Carolina for a while now. There are two tribes that have sportsbooks in their casinos. However, you have to go to the reservation and place your wagers in person.

Spending the day in a book is a wonderful time. More fun if you’re winning, but still better than those same hours when you're stuck at work. Why is it that the Tar Heel State made the rules on legal sports betting so that you need to physically visit the tribes in order get a wager down on the Win Total for this year’s Mack Brown team?

There’s a majority of states that now have legal sports betting. Most of the world is ahead of the US in handling what is a pretty simple concept. Last summer the North Carolina State Senate approved a bill that would allow online sports betting: it’s now in their House and is expected to pass this summer.

Seeing the success of the mobile market in neighboring states Tennessee and Virginia is helping this bill along. Years after PASPA, we still see states struggling to get it right. Why these late bloomers to the world of sports wagering are trying to reinvent the wheel is hard to understand. Look at the states that are doing it correctly and you’ll see a huge percentage of their volume comes from online and mobile.

Similar to voters in Chicago, bettors will bet early and often when it’s convenient. The leaders of North Carolina’s government don’t even need to look outside their own borders to see the benefits of betting by mobile app. In 1962, the town barber shop in Mayberry was infiltrated by a bookie. All those North Carolina leaders need to do is watch “The Bookie Barber” episode on the Andy Griffith show and they’d see how easy it was (and remains) to wager by phone!

March Madness Is A Tough Act To Follow in Nevada

The Nevada sports betting numbers for April, according to recent figures reported by the Nevada Gaming Board, were a combination of ups and downs. That probably doesn’t shock any of the businesses that notice a distinct drop in their employees' production during the annual rite of spring that is the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

On the bright side, it was the highest handle for the month of April ever. The $582+ million in wagers booked from retail and online had a solid 28%+ increase over those same wagering days in 2021. Compared to March, the financials look a little different. Book makers made a tad above $25 million on those bets and that’s a big drop from the $36.9 million they cleared the previous month. A monthly handle that drops almost $300 million from the last 30 days is bound to impact your net.

There’s no REAL football in the beginning of spring. MLB, NHL, and NBA wagers will pick up when their respective playoffs begin, and it just makes sense that there’ was a drop on the sports betting revenue graph.

This monthly report should not induce any concern for the welfare of your favorite Nevada sports book. They say, it’s easy to own an ice cream store in the summer. Making it through the cold months of winter is when the effort begins. If you are thinking about starting your own casino, maybe you’ll rethink having that gala grand opening in April.

In Canada, Liquor In The Front, Poker In The Rear

When Canada changed its criminal code to allow single-event sports betting last summer, supporters were ecstatic. The various provinces would now be able to regulate wagering on sports any way they saw fit.

Like any other location that legalizes sports wagering, there’s a transition with the citizens bets moving from the previous black market. Often, some of those transactions never make it. There’s a lot of activity in that are consummated in between those two extremes and they occur in the Grey Market.

Unfortunately, for the residents in the Provence of Alberta, they’ve been left behind. Their representatives decided to only allow the current format of the Western Canada Lottery Sport Select system. That choice was made by a governmental agency called The Alberta Gaming, Liquor, and Cannabis Commission.

Sports bettors north of the US border have complained about the lottery offerings since they began. Canadiens are not only using these grey market providers to wager on events-- those same “illegal” operators are providing the same media type barrage that we’ve seen here. Media companies, it seems, are padding their coffers allowing ads for sports betting entities that aren’t even able to run a business in their market.

However, these gaming and liquor commissions don't often inspire confidence. When was the last time you saw an agency with gambling, liquor or cannabis in their title, that got things done quickly and without red tape?

Written by Chas Filardi, US sports betting industry expert and founder of The Sports Betting Channel.