Wagering analysts expect $400M in Super Bowl bets with up to $80M in Pa.

Super Bowl LIV is coming up on Sunday and those who keep watch on the sports betting industry are expecting around $400 million in wagering in the U.S., with Pennsylvania enjoying a fairly big slice of the pie.

Pennsylvania is one of 13 states that currently offer legal sports betting, however, it is one of the newer ones. Still, Dustin Gouker, lead analyst for Play USA, is predicting that between $40 million and $80 million could be wagered on the big game in Pennsylvania, with his best bet that it will fall right in the middle at around $60 million.

“It is a little difficult to predict,” Gouker said. “It’s based a little bit on what we know from what we’ve seen in Pennsylvania so far.”

To predict the amount of money that will be wagered on the big game, which features the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers, Gouker said he looked at Las Vegas, the original home of legal sports betting in the U.S.

Last year, bettors in Nevada wagered $150 million on the Super Bowl alone.

In New Jersey, which had about a year of sports betting under its belt by Super Bowl Sunday last year, saw around $40 million in betting, but most casinos in the state didn’t have online betting yet, which Gouker said generally accounts for around 80 percent of all sports wagering in states that have both in-house and online betting.

In Pennsylvania, 10 of the 12 casinos have retail sports betting, eight offer online betting as well.

At the time of last year’s Super Bowl, only six casinos offered any sports betting and they were mostly very new operations.

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board doesn’t break down wagering by sport, however bettors waged around $31.5 million in February 2019, with the Super Bowl being the largest sporting event that month.

Gouker said sports betting helps casinos in ways beyond the direct revenue it brings in.

“They can acquire customers that they might not have otherwise,” he said.

So Super Bowl Sunday is seen as a big opportunity to extend their reach.

He notes that sports betting is still in its earliest growth stages in the state and he expects a continued upward trend in the amount of dollars being wagered.

“We’re really years out from a mature sports betting industry,” he said, and based on what sports betting has meant for casinos in Nevada, he expects revenue increases to continue.

For the record and for those interested, most sports books are favoring the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. They are a one-and-a-half point favorite over the 49ers according to Gouker.