The dominos fell with stunning speed over a 48-hour period this week as fear of spread of the coronavirus forced the suspension of the NBA, NHL and MLB seasons, while the NCAA Tournament, one of gambling’s Holy Grails, was canceled altogether.
The 2020 Masters golf tournament has also been postponed, Augusta National Golf Club chairman Fred Ridley announced on Friday.
The Masters is one of the top gambling weekends on the sports calendar.
So while there’s bitter disappointment among players and fans, it’s also crushing blow to New Jersey’s sports betting industry at a time when revenue records could have been shattered.
In what would have been one of the two busiest times of the year – some $540 million was wagered in the state in January in the buildup to Super Bowl LIV – the industry is on hold indefinitely during the COVID-19 outbreak around the country.
In the 21 months that sports betting has been legal, the additional revenue stream has provided a much-needed lifeline to New Jersey’s horse racing industry at the Meadowlands and Monmouth Park, with their respective sports books and online operations generating over $277 million in gross revenues during that time.
The Meadowlands has also canceled live harness racing through the weekend, with no decision made of the immediate future of racing.
“The ripple effect to sports betting will be profound because this extends so far beyond the sports wagering bubble,” said Daniel Wallach, a South Florida-based attorney who specializes in the sports betting industry. “This is just one subset of a broader impact across every segments of American life, and that is going to have a continued impact.
“These are unprecedented times and the gambling industry will take a huge hit. As will so many industries. So there will be an immediate impact and a trickle-down impact over time.”
A closer look at the numbers New Jersey sports books produced in February show a 54.4 percent increase from a year earlier, with $494.8 million wagered, compared with $320.4 million in 2019.
“New Jersey’s year-over-year gains remained impressive in February, but we are in uncharted territory now,” said Dustin Gouker, lead analyst for the website PlayNJ.com. “Obviously there are bigger concerns with coronavirus, but the NBA is a major revenue driver for New Jersey’s sportsbooks. So the suspension of the season, in addition to suspensions of other sports, will undoubtedly have a significant effect.”
It’s not just New Jersey, with legal sports betting sweeping across the country after the 2018 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that the law that banned it in all but a few jurisdictions was unconstitutional.
The No. 1 sports betting state is Nevada. Sixteen states have legalized sports betting. All other states have imminent or long-range plays to make sports betting legal, except Idaho, Wisconsin and Utah.
In 2019, when Tiger Woods won his fifth career Green Jacket, the William Hill U.S. Sportsbook in Nevada had its biggest single golf payout in the company’s history in the United Stated, according to ESPN.
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