Gamblers can begin placing legal bets on their favorite NFL team from the comfort of their couch beginning Thursday as sports betting goes live in Arizona.
The newly enacted law opens the state to a whole new world of gambling that includes not only wagers on whether the Cardinals will carry the day on Sunday but also whether, for example, Hungary will top Lithuania in the World Cup of Darts.
While many people are likely familiar with Nevada-style sports betting, there’s plenty to learn with the launch of mobile sports betting in Arizona. The following are some of the basics for how it all works.
What mobile sportsbooks are available in Arizona?
Arizona allows for 20 mobile sportsbook licenses, 10 to Native American tribes and 10 to professional sports venues.
So far, 18 of the 20 licenses for sportsbooks that are available in Arizona have been issued, and 15 have announced which mobile sportsbooks they will offer. Those are Ballys Corp., Barstool Sportsbook, Betfred Sports, BetMGM, Caesars Entertainment, Digital Gaming, DraftKings Inc., FanDuel Group, Fubo Gaming Inc., Golden Nugget, Rush Street Interactive, SuperBook Sports, TwinSpires, Unibet and WynnBET.
As of Wednesday, the major operators, including DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM and WynnBET were signing up customers, while some of the other apps were not yet allowing Arizona residents to create accounts.
In addition, the Navajo Nation, Tohono O’odham Nation and Arizona Coyotes have yet to announce which sportsbooks they will use.
What sports can I bet on?
You can bet on basically every major sport, and lots of lesser-known ones as well. Big league football, basketball, baseball and hockey for sure, plus golf, motorsports, tennis and even table tennis.
“There are a lot of options. If you want to watch a sport, we are most likely to have a little action on it,” BetMGM Data Analyst John Ewing said.
The Arizona Department of Gaming must approve all the sports for which the vendors accept wagers.
Some people might scoff at gambling on minor sports, but during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when major sports canceled and rescheduled their seasons, mobile sportsbooks learned those can be important.
“We were booking a lot of soccer, premier league darts, table tennis,” said Johnny Avello, director of race and sportsbooks for DraftKings. “There are a lot of bettors that like to play regular tennis … then table tennis caught on. … It was one of the biggest things we had during the pandemic.”
Some of those sports continue to be popular in certain states today, he said.
“Just go slow until you understand it and eventually you will find you niche, whether that’s football or table tennis,” Avello said.
When do sportsbooks open in person?
Few full-fledged in-person sportsbooks will open soon, with most venues taking time to plan and construct their facilities.
However, the Phoenix Suns are planning to have the FanDuel sportsbook in the Footprint Center downtown open Thursday. Down the street the Caesars facility at Chase Field will have kiosks to place bets Thursday, but the full-fledged sportsbook that is planned will not open for months.
The BetMGM sportsbooks in the three Gila River casinos are expected to open by the end of the year.
The in-person sportsbooks are “massively important,” according to Keith Wall, a vice president with FanDuel.
“Customer service is a key part of the experience,” he said. “Knowing a huge amount of customers never will have placed a sports bet and don’t know how to, we have a lot of staff on hand to walk people through that journey, and explain to them how to place a bet and all the different types of bets and to get them to understand how sports betting in general works.”
But sportsbook operators expect the vast majority of revenue from mobile betting.
“The brick and mortar locations, those are fun,” Avello said. “You walk in, you get to talk to the ticket writer. … You have camaraderie with other bettors that walk into an establishment and watch games. That is a fun aspect of wagering. But the way to get the most volume and most people interested is on the digital side, the way Arizona is doing it.”
How do I place a mobile bet in Arizona?
The sportsbooks have apps that you can download to a smartphone or other Internet-connected device. They require registration to ensure a bettor is 21 years old, and they also require users to allow location tracking to ensure the person is betting from Arizona. This ensures they are only offered bets that are legal in this state.
Once users create their accounts, they can fund them from their bank accounts, and Arizona even allows them to fund an account with a credit card. Not all credit card companies allow holders to make such deposits though, and some may charge a cash-advance fee.
Once a player’s account is funded, wagers can be placed based on the money in that account. If a user wins a bet, the winnings are credited to the account.
What types of bets can I make?
The easiest bet to understand is called a money line. This is where the gambler simply picks a team to win or lose — it doesn’t matter by how much. The sportsbook will pay more to the underdog, or least favored team.
The money line is shown as a positive or negative number, with a negative number indicating the favored team. So if a team has a (-150) listed on the money line, that indicates that people will need to bet $150 on that team to win $100.
The underdog in this case would show a +150, which means a gambler betting $100 on that team would get $150 if the team wins. The “payout” for that bet would actually be listed as $250 because it would include both the original amount wagered plus the winnings.
Gamblers also can bet on a point spread. The sportsbook will set a line based on which team is favored. If the favored team doesn’t win by more than that spread, or “cover” the spread, then bets on them to cover the spread lose.
Arizona also allows proposition bets, which include things like which team will score first or how many touchdowns a particular player will score.
Gamblers can even bet today on who will win the Super Bowl this season.
Sportsbooks also can offer in-game bets, which are posted during the event and can include things like who will score next.
“In- game offerings are based on what is actually occurring in the game,” Ewing said.
For example, one team might be heavily favored before a game begins. But once it’s underway, that favored team might fall behind. In-game bets allow gamblers who bet on the favorite ahead of the event to then place money on the other team (or double down on their original pick despite the worsened odds).
It was actually some of this in-game betting that helped drive money into the table tennis and other offbeat events during the pandemic, experts said.
The sportsbooks rely on complex algorithms to analyze all the sporting contests, in addition to analysts who watch the games and set the in-game wagers.
There are no proposition bets allowed on college sports in Arizona. And there is no betting allowed on high-school athletics at all. Arizona also does not allow bets on injuries or penalties.
How do sportsbooks set team odds?
Here’s how Avello from DraftKings explains it: Each team is given a power rating based on their offense, defense and intangibles.
“The Kansas City Chiefs would be maybe a 94-95 to start the season,” he said. “The Cleveland Browns maybe a 92.”
Their matchup game will be played in Kansas City, and the Chiefs get another 3 points in their favor because they are on their home field. That’s how DraftKings calculated the Chiefs as a 5.5-point favorite when they opened betting on the game, he said.
The line can change as gamblers place their bets, but bets are honored for the line at the time the wager was made.
“We know the sophisticated players,” Avello said. “And when those sharp players bet, you move the line based on what they like. Some guys do this for a living. They are good at what they do and we respect their opinion.”
How does a sportsbook make money?
Sportsbooks make money, quite simply, because gamblers lose more than they win. And that fact comes thanks to the way the sportsbooks set the payouts and odds on games.
Mobile sportsbooks in Nevada on average “win” about 5% of the money gamblers wager, based on data from the Gaming Control Board for the past year. So for every $100 bet on mobile sports, $5 is won by the sportsbooks and $95 goes back to the bettors.
That’s actually a much smaller win percent than games like blackjack (14%), roulette (19%) and keno (28%). Slots in Nevada have a win percent ranging from 5% to 10% depending on the denomination of the machines.
But that win percent adds up quickly, particularly because gamblers tend to keep betting.
How much do they win? DraftKings was a fantasy sports company that launched its sportsbook in 2018. The company now generates about $100 million a month in revenue, based on its latest earnings, as sports betting has expanded to several states.
With the launch in Arizona, that figure is sure to increase.
I think I have a problem with gambling. How can I get help?
Resources are available online at problemgambling.az.gov, or by calling 1-800-NEXT-STEP or texting NEXT-STEP to 53342.
The Arizona Division of Problem Gambling subsidizes treatment for people with a gambling problem as well as treatment for family, friends, coworkers, employers and others affected by this behavior.
The state also has a self-exclusion list.
Mobile sportsbooks must check to ensure players are not on the self-exclusion list before creating an account for them and must check the list against their accounts, as well as make “commercially reasonable” efforts to ensure those people are not allowed to place bets.
Any bets people on the list make that the sportsbook subsequently learns of must be reported to the Department of Gaming.
People who place themselves on this list cannot be paid winnings by mobile sportsbooks or jackpots by hand at casinos, and any such winnings must be donated to a nonprofit.
The list is confidential.
I’ve seen a lot of ads and offers on TV and online. Will these continue?
Yes.
Reach reporter Ryan Randazzo at ryan.randazzo@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4331. Follow him on Twitter @UtilityReporter.
Subscribe to azcentral.com today.
