Last updated: March 14, 2024
Kentucky joins the mobile sports betting landscape, marking the 25th state to do so, with NFL Week 4 action on the horizon.
Kentucky is the 25th state to offer mobile sports betting now that its online sports betting market is up and running. The online launch happened after the NFL season started, but not before college football started. It is now time for Week 4 of the NFL season, which starts Thursday night with a rivalry game between the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions in the NFC North.
In a short video message released Thursday morning, Governor Andy Beshear talked about how excited he was for mobile sports betting to begin. Starting at 6 a.m., authorized mobile apps started taking bets, which added to the over $4.5 million that had already been bet in person. What’s interesting about this is that these bets are helping the state grow, which shows that people are still committed to making Kentucky stronger.
Of the eight licensed operators, seven turned on their apps within three hours of the 6 a.m. start time. These were Bet365, BetMGM, Caesars, DraftKings, Fanatics, and FanDuel. A lot of them were ready in the first hour. Circle Sports, the eighth operator, wants to go live as soon as possible.
Bets can be made by people as young as 18 in Kentucky, but most online sportsbooks require people to be at least 21. DraftKings and Bet365 are the only two that will let people younger than 21 join.
Kentucky already lets people bet on sports in person as of September 7. The timeline from legalization to launch was very short, since Governor Beshear only signed the bill in March. Kentucky’s sports books took bets worth about $4.5 million in the first two weeks of in-person betting.
Without a doubt, the online numbers will go over that, and they will do it quickly. Legal Sports Report says that in states with both land-based and online sports betting, online bets make up about 90% of all bets. The site also says that Kentucky sportsbooks could make as much as $1bn in 2023, even though there are only three months left in the year.
People often look at the professional sports teams in a state to get an idea of how popular sports betting might be once the state opens its market. Kentucky doesn’t have any major league teams, but the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals and MLB’s Cincinnati Reds both have big fan bases in Kentucky because they are close to the state. In the Bluegrass State, college sports are king. The University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville are two of the best known.
There are states around Kentucky that allow sports betting, so one of the goals of Thursday’s launch is to keep money from sports bets in Kentucky. GeoComply said in a report this spring that it did almost 1.3 million geolocation checks in Kentucky in March. That means that many people in the state tried to place bets online.
There were checks from about 62,000 different player accounts. A lot of the pings came from sportsbooks in Ohio and Indiana. In Ohio, 41% came from sportsbooks, and in Indiana, 38.6% came from sportsbooks. That’s a lot of possible bets that can now stay within Kentucky’s borders, not to mention all the people who will now sign up for wagering accounts since it is legal.
Online sportsbooks have to pay a tax rate of 14.25% on their adjusted gross revenues, while retail sportsbooks only have to pay a tax rate of 9.75%. Governor Beshear placed the first legal bet on a sports game in the state earlier this month. He thinks that the tax revenue from sports betting will be about $23 million a year.
Susan is a verified gambling support specialist who has helped thousands of problem gamblers get back on their feet through therapy and financial counseling. She’s also worked as a cage manager in four Las Vegas casinos and spent two years in Macau in her 30s, where she became extremely savvy at Sic Bo and other Asian table games. Her knowledge and expertise have and continue to play a priceless part in how we structure our content, particularly when it comes to game guides and casino reviews.
