SportsHandle and friends deliver another round-up of the week’s big developments in US sports betting.
Long Payout Lines, Wild Scene At Live! After Eagles Make Super Bowl
Eagles fans exiting Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday evening and making their way a half-mile across the parking complex to Live! Casino & Hotel Philadelphia had a couple of reasons to be exuberant.
One, of course, was the home team clinching a trip to the Super Bowl with a 31-7 trouncing of the injury-ravaged San Francisco 49ers, putting the Birds just one win away from the franchise’s second championship in six seasons.
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So Far, Sports Betting Isn’t Quite The Boon The Smallest Players Hoped It Would Be
One month ago, on Jan. 1, many in Ohio were brimming with the excitement and enthusiasm that always flourishes on the first day of live, legal sports betting. A month later, the smallest players in the game are experiencing a reality they may not have expected.
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PredictIt Lives To Fight For Another Day, At Least For Now
Here’s a prediction you can lock down, mostly because the courts say so: The PredictIt political prediction market can continue operating – at least for the time being.
On Thursday, the beleaguered prediction market was given what amounts to a stay of execution when the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an injunction while it continues to ponder the future of the operation. Previously, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had ordered the New Zealand-based operation to shut down by Feb. 15.
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MGM Resorts Deal With NFLPA Brings Players Closer To Shilling For Sportsbooks
Tell me you’re shilling for a sportsbook without telling me you’re shilling for a sportsbook.
That’s pretty much what happened last Friday, when MGM Resorts International and the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) announced, via press release, an “events and hospitality partnership.”
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Who Will Break LeBron James’ All-Time NBA Scoring Record?
Barring some sort of catastrophic injury or a sudden desire to stop playing the sport that’s made him a household name around the globe, LeBron James will break Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s all-time NBA scoring record sometime before the All-Star Break in mid-February.
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DraftKings, FanDuel Executives Plead For Lower Taxes In New York
Executives from the two biggest mobile sportsbook operators in New York contended Tuesday that the state’s high tax rate could lead to dire consequences for the nation’s No. 1 sports betting state if legislators don’t lower it soon.
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Sports Betting Launches In Massachusetts, Giving Three Retail Books A Head Start
As retail sports betting went live Tuesday in Massachusetts, bettors who attended a jovial BetMGM Sportsbook ribbon-cutting ceremony at MGM Springfield were greeted with an expansive, life-size poster of Kevin Garnett.
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Media Notebook: Carlos Correa Saga Shows Dangers Of Instant Reporting
As the minute hand approached midnight on the East Coast on Dec. 13, ESPN baseball reporter Jeff Passan, one of the top news breakers in the industry, tweeted a scoop about one of Major League Baseball’s best free agents, shortstop Carlos Correa.
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Requiem For The So-Called ‘Risk-Free Bet’
The allure of a “risk-free bet” feels obvious. What better way to join a sports betting platform than with a wager that doesn’t carry any risk?
In recent years, new bettors were inundated with marketing materials from mobile sportsbook operators about “risk-free” sign-up bonuses. Customers loved the offers, and operators used the phrasing to attract new customers in competitive state markets, but after regulatory pushback operators are moving away from the risk-free term.
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