Super Bowl LVII between the Chiefs and Eagles is likely to become the most wagered-on event in betting history, representatives from three sportsbooks told the Action Network.
The sources were granted anonymity to speak freely because the overall data has yet to be finalized. There are three more days of bets still to run, and roughly "80-90% of the total game handle" will come in the two hours before kickoff, one source said.
But all three representatives indicated that the game was on course to shatter previously held betting records.
This can be attributed to a number of factors.
For one, the marketplace has opened up drastically, relative to even a year ago.
The largest state in overall betting handle, New York, legalized online sports betting in Jan. 2022 — just before Super Bowl LVI between the Rams and Bengals. New users in the state were only given a matter of weeks to familiarize themselves with the new platforms and make wagers.
In the year since, New Yorkers have generated about $16 billion in handle, by far the most out of any single state in history. Several other states set overall handle records last year, as well.
And since Jan. 2022, four additional states have launched online sports betting: Kansas, Ohio, Maryland and Arkansas. Massachusetts is set to start in March.
That will make a total of 22 states with online betting, in addition to Washington D.C.
Before 2018, sports bets could only be made in specific jurisdictions — mostly in Nevada. Still, in that year's Super Bowl, about $5 billion in wagers were placed on the big game, with about 97% of those hosted in illegal markets.
A Supreme Court case from that year left it up to the states to decide whether or not to legalize sports betting.
More accessibility has come in conjunction with the increased approval rating of sports betting as a whole.
The Washington Post and the University of Maryland conducted a study in 2022 that showed about 66% of the American public approved of making sports betting legal across the country.
That's up from 55% in just 2017 and 41% in 1995. The same institutions conducted the same study in each of those years.
And over the last year, the amount of people who said they would bet on the Super Bowl has increased by about 32%, according to a study conducted by Seton Hall University.
