Vermont Sports Betting Sees Boost from Recent Tourism
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SportsTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - All right, well, I'm a little surprised
00:06 to read before the show our next topic here,
00:09 which is not the fact that Vermont has sports betting,
00:12 but the fact that Vermont is a tourist attraction.
00:16 Didn't know that to start, no offense to anybody in Vermont.
00:19 And secondly, Jim, the fact that people
00:22 who are coming in town, I guess, are betting on sports
00:26 and tourism is responsible for some of the numbers
00:30 that are on the positive side for them.
00:31 You'll have to explain this one to me
00:32 because I was surprised reading this.
00:34 - Yeah, you're absolutely right, Craig.
00:37 And I think I was a little bit surprised by it as well.
00:42 Speaking to some regulators in Vermont
00:45 over the last couple of days,
00:47 and they rolled out their January sports betting figures
00:52 from January 11th when they launched
00:54 to the end of the month, the 31st.
00:55 So 20 days, we'll round up and call it three weeks.
01:00 They had about $20 million in handle
01:03 and out of state bettors accounted for 36% of that.
01:08 They were 40% of the overall players
01:13 in the state during those three weeks.
01:16 There's about 52,431 players using accounts
01:21 in Vermont over those three weeks.
01:24 And out of towners made up 40% of that.
01:27 I live not too far from the Vermont border
01:31 and I guess you could consider me a Vermont tourist
01:35 a couple of times a year.
01:36 And certainly this time of year is huge there
01:39 with all the ski mountains.
01:41 So they did tell me that Killington,
01:43 which has a very popular ski mountain in the Northeast,
01:48 was one of the most popular sort of hotspots
01:51 for sports betting over the initial couple
01:55 of weeks there in Vermont.
01:57 So the regulators told me that they were surprised
02:01 and pleased obviously by the tourists coming in,
02:05 most likely from New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts,
02:09 Connecticut, Pennsylvania, all legal sports betting states
02:14 that these tourists could come in from
02:16 and continue to seamlessly use those sports betting
02:21 apps.
02:22 The interesting part to that too,
02:25 that I found was $37 per bet on average
02:30 for out of state bettors compared to $18 per bet on average
02:35 for in-state Vermont residents betting,
02:40 which I thought was pretty interesting.
02:41 But as I dove into that a little bit more,
02:44 I guess it makes pretty good sense seeing as though
02:48 those states that I just mentioned do tend to have
02:52 higher per capita betting dollars,
02:55 comparatively across the country,
02:58 they're some of the highest ones.
03:00 So that certainly would make sense.
03:03 Not to get too sciencey and nerdy here with you, Craig,
03:07 on a Friday, but the other tourist attraction
03:10 apparently coming to Vermont in April
03:13 is the total solar eclipse.
03:16 The regulators were telling me that Vermont
03:18 is going to be a popular tourist destination for that here
03:23 during that first week in April.
03:26 Hotels are already booked and they're excited to see
03:29 just how that event also positively impacts sports betting,
03:34 much like the ski season did there in January.
03:39 And they saw some positive trends for February as well.
03:42 They've already boosted their fiscal outlook.
03:45 They were projecting $1.2 million in tax revenue
03:50 from sports betting over the first six months.
03:53 They already hit that in January,
03:55 so they upgraded that looking at about
03:57 three to three and a half million dollars now
04:00 in those first six months.
04:01 So tourists really driving a positive trend here
04:04 in the first couple of weeks and months
04:07 of sports betting in Vermont.
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