“Sports Betting” Search Spikes on First Day of Legal Online NY Sportsbooks

• Online sports betting officially launched in New York today
• It didn’t take long for New Yorkers to start looking into the newly-legal activity
• Internet search around sports-betting terms rose exponentially

At 9:00 am ET today (Saturday, Jan. 8th), New York online sports betting officially launched.

This moment has been a long time in the making and there were many hurdles and hiccups along the way. But the widely-held belief in the industry is that New York will become the largest online-betting market in the US among the states that have heretofore legalized the activity.

After all, New York is the fourth-most populous state in the US, tops among legal states. While fellow online-betting states Pennsylvania and Illinois rank fifth and sixth in population, respectively, they are both home to about 12.5 million people.

New York is home to over 19 million.

Search Trends Indicate New Yorkers Are Interested in Online Betting

The latest search results surrounding online betting in New York indicate a big interest among the populous of the Empire State.

The image below is a screenshot from Google Trends for the search term “New York sports betting” over the past 90 days.

The small spike in November was around the time that the New York State Gaming Commission selected which sportsbook operators would be granted licenses in the state.

The spike at the end of the X axis started around Jan. 6th, two days before online betting officially launched in the state when rumors began to circle. It should be noted that the dotted line represents the Google Trends forecast (and not official results). The forecast is based on variables like the number of news stories recently published on the subject.

In a few days time, that line could actually be rising far above all the other peaks on the graph.

The graphs for search terms like “FanDuel New York” and “DraftKings New York” look similar.

Is Betting Handle Following the Same Trend?

At this point – a mere 11 hours after online betting officially launched – it’s too early to compile any data on how much New Yorkers have actually wagered in the

But if you buy into social media as a portent, the betting handle is going to be as impressive as the spike in internet search.

Fanduel just hit New York ….. everyone right now pic.twitter.com/PfuBWgliSJ

— LOUIS LITT (@Rouky_Los) January 8, 2022

As numbers do start to come in, SportsBettingDime will be tracking New York’s sports-betting revenue. Expect the numbers from 2019 to 2021 to be dwarfed when the numbers for 2022 come out. In-person betting at select New York casinos has actually been legal for over three years, which is why there is any data from as far back as 2019.