Baseball bets of $ 100,000, one after another, began arriving over the weekend at the sportsbook in Borgata, the last casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic.
By the end of the first weekend of the baseball season, Borgata had taken roughly the equivalent of three weeks of normal MLB betting handling in just three days, despite the casino being limited to just 25% capacity.
“It’s been very impressive,” Tom Gable, Borgata’s director of racing and sports, told ESPN on Sunday, the first day the casino was fully open to the general public after an invitation-only event the previous days. “Today, we made six different six-figure bets. Yesterday, we made five six-figure bets.”
Sportsbooks across the country felt the pent-up demand from baseball bettors. William Hill US and the SuperBook at Westgate Las Vegas said Saturday, which featured a 15-game baseball whiteboard and a UFC event, was their biggest day in terms of amount wagered, as essentially all major sports were They closed when the pandemic took hold in mid-March.
“It exceeded expectations,” said Jeff Sherman, vice president of risk for the SuperBook. “We have lines in the [betting] windows … Obviously they are spaced, but there are more people coming to gamble. “
At DraftKings, more money was wagered in Thursday’s season opener between the New York Yankees and the Washington Nationals than had been wagered on any baseball game in the bookmaker’s two-year history.
Saturday’s games between the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets and Yankees and Nationals were ranked in the DraftKings’ Top 10 Baseball Games, according to sports betting chief Johnny Avello.
“The handling of baseball, I thought it was going to be great, and it’s great,” Avello said Sunday.
The betting crowd got off to a hot start on Thursday and Friday, and the favorites combined 14-2.
“If the first results are an indication, I wish baseball [have] stayed out, “joked Chris Andrews, a veteran bookmaker at South Point Casino in Las Vegas, joked on Saturday morning on Twitter.
The underdogs struggled over the weekend to help bookmakers keep the lights on in one of the busiest Augusts the U.S. sports world has ever experienced. In addition to baseball, the NBA and NHL are preparing for their playoffs in the coming weeks, and the first golf tournament of the season reviewed, the PGA Championship, begins on August 6.
“It will probably be the biggest August we have ever seen,” Sherman said. “That’s a good thing. It’s great.”
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