2023 NFL Sports Betting Up in Week 1 Compared With 2022

• GeoComply released betting figures for week one of the 2023 NFL season
• Bets for NFL 2023 opening week saw a 56% increase of 2022 opening week
• The company reported 242.3 million geolocation transactions for the first week

The first week of the NFL saw a frenzy of online sports betting, according to GeoComply, a company that processes geolocation checks to verify online sports bettors’ locations.

GeoComply reported 242.3 million geolocation transactions across its U.S. regulated online sportsbook customers during the first week of the NFL, a 56% increase from the same time period in the 2022 season.

More than 1.1. million new player accounts were created across the company’s U.S. sportsbook customers, an increase of 40% from last year.

Football Is Always King

Approximately 60% of online sportsbook operators’ annual revenue comes from the NFL season, according to GeoComply.

“Consumer awareness around the security and fairness of legal online betting platforms has played a pivotal role in the responsible growth of the industry. While the increase in our transaction volume emphasizes the appetite for regulated online sports betting, our data also accentuates an urgent call to action. States without regulated online sports betting should get off the legalization sidelines and unlock their ability to protect consumers and generate significant tax revenue,” GeoComply Co-Founder and CEO Anna Sainsbury said in a press release.

Approximately 47% of the U.S. population has access to legal and regulated online sports betting at the start of the NFL season, which will jump to 51% when North Carolina, Maine, Vermont, and Kentucky sports betting launch in the next few months.

Excitement for the opening game between the Chiefs and Lion on Thursday, Sept. 7, was evident as there was a huge spike in transactions after the first touchdown. After Detroit Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown scored the NFL’s first touchdown of 2023, GeoComply documents 4,200 transactions per second immediately following the score as NFL odds shifted for live bettors.

Thousands of New Sports Betting Accounts

Newly launched states entering their first full NFL season saw increased interest moving into the new season. Ohio, Maryland, and Massachusetts saw thousands of newly created accounts moving into week one.

• Ohio: 133,000 new accounts
• Maryland: 61,000 new accounts
• Massachusetts: 59,000 new accounts

Ohio experienced nearly 20 million week one geolocation checks across customers in the state, while Maryland saw 12.7 million transactions and Massachusetts noted 9.2 million transaction.

Lost Revenue in Unregulated States

Perhaps most interesting were the number of geolocation checks in states without legalized sports betting. According to GeoComply, there more nearly one million combined geolocation checks in Missouri, Mississippi, Georgia, Minnesota, Alabama, and South Carolina.

All six states have considered sports betting legalization in the past several years.

Missouri led the way with a whopping 553,000 geolocation checks in the state, followed by Mississippi’s 262,000 checks, and Georgia’s 92,000 checks.

Based on annual tax estimations for the state’s average population size, a tax rate of 15%, and estimated gross gaming revenue, GeoComply estimated that nearly $320.5 million in annual taxes were lost in the unregulated states.

• Georgia: $89 million
• Missouri: $59 million
• Minnesota: $59 million
• Alabama: $47 million
• South Carolina: $42 million
• Mississippi: $24.5 million