New York City sports bettors now have plenty of options when it comes to legally wagering, but the downside is that all of those options involve a small or significant amount of travel.
Sportsbooks at Rivers Casino in Schenectady, New York and Tioga Downs in Nichols, New York are set to open this week, with books at del Lago in the Finger Lakes and Resorts World Catskills soon to follow. All are at least two hours away from Manhattan.
More convenient for those in the city looking to place a bet on sports is neighboring New Jersey, which has both online betting and physical locations available. The top retail sportsbook in the country in terms of revenue, outside of Nevada, has been the FanDuel Sportsbook location at MetLife Stadium at the Meadowlands as it has been attracting a hefty amount of New Yorkers.
Sports betting has been legal in New Jersey for a full year now, and the state is already challenging Nevada for the top handle in the nation. Over the past 12 months, the Garden State has taken over $3.2 billion in sports bets. An estimated 80 percent of those bets were done on mobile devices.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been in favor of legalizing sports betting at the upstate casinos but has been against the mobile component. New York State Senator Joseph Addabbo Jr. and Assemblymember J. Gary Pretlow, meanwhile, have been pushing to amend legislation so that online sports betting is also available to New Yorkers moving forward.
“Billions of New Yorker’s dollars are being wagered on sports in the black market,” Pretlow said in June. “By enabling the mobile sports wagering component, we will be able to capture a majority of this illicit practice while further protecting our consumers.”
