Florida Sports Betting, Aaron Rodgers' Achilles, Great Teams are Terrible Now. Sports.
It's been a busy week
Aaron Rodgers came to New York to make some news and it only took him three plays on Monday to do just that. A New York Minute, as it were.
That’s all he’s going to have this year, and maybe ever.
It’s certainly not what he, Jets fans, sports bettors, and the hand-wringing fanboy New York-centric national media anticipated.
Rodgers’ Achilles tendon injury early in Monday Night Football against Buffalo left Peyton Manning vexed for ManningCast material, Jets fans equal parts disconsolate and incensed, and reverberated through the sports betting industry.
A sampling:
The Jets (+1800 to win Super Bowl 58 before kickoff on Monday at BetMGM), went to +2500 when Rodgers was replaced by Zach Wilson, and +5000 after head coach Robert Saleh spoke ominously (and presciently) about the Achilles diagnosis.
At FanDuel, the Jets went from +1800 to +6500 to win the Super Bowl.
The Jets hovered around the 2-point-underdog range for Week 2 against the Cowboys before MNF, but had swollen to 8.5-point underdogs as Rodgers metaphorically thumbed through old magazines in the doctor’s office waiting room.
Florida gets legal sports betting back for Week 3?
Maybe.
On Tuesday. the US District Court of Appeals, DC Circuit refused a final appeal request from West Flagler Associates that could allow the Seminole Tribe of Florida to start taking bets on its Hard Rock Bet app again on Sept. 19.
West Flagler sued successfully in 2021 to shut down the Seminoles’ operation after a little more than a month. And then — really simplifying here — won a bunch of court victories before a surprise Appeals Court reversal in June.
WFA has 90 days to appeal to the Supreme Court, but less than 1% of cases are taken up.
The state court also is an option.
Such drama!
In short, the third most-populated state (almost 22 million) could have legal sports betting back. That’s bad for the black market, but only good for the Seminole Tribe of Florida, which has a virtual monopoly on gambling in the state.
Here’s a good resource for you Floridians
The crack Hard Rock social media staff seemed to be having a little more fun than usual in the hours after the ruling. This sent the X-verse into a bit of a tizzy.
And then they went and changed the Hard Rock Bet app icon the next morning, almost as if they were getting ready for something.
As part of my daily duties here at Gaming Today — and because I live in the Tampa Bay area — checking to see if the Hard Rock app is accepting deposits or bets is part of my morning route, right after letting Tilly pee and right before a nice cup of cold brew coffee.
So start hammering my Twitter feed around 6:45 a.m. EST on Sept. 19. Or before just to make it part of your morning routine.
There’s no DVOA or QB pressures without these guys … jealous (Yeah, me, too)
We had fun with this one.
It’s a tale of the 30 or so “charters” of FTN Data that get paid to watch NFL streams and log all the granular stats by hand for the weirdo analytics that fuel sports betting and DFS these days.
Here’s a deeper podcast version:
Oh, no, DraftKings. No
It stands to reason that someone in a decision-making or -approving capacity at DraftKings had a very bad day on Monday. They deserve it.
If they were able to escape with their marketing department jobs, that’s a win for compassion and a loss for corporate self-awareness.
In short, one of the nation’s upper-echelon sports betting brands decided to market a series of New York-themed parlays branded “Never Forget” on the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which brought down both World Trade Center towers and killed around 2,750 persons in New York.
This was tacky and tone-deaf. That DraftKings was pitching ridiculous parlays seemed to anger #GamblingTwitter a bit more.
DraftKings apologized:
"We sincerely apologize for the featured parlay that was shared briefly in commemoration of 9/11. We respect the significance of this day for our country and especially for the families of those who were directly affected."
But you have to wonder if it would have, if not for a hearteningly emphatic and outraged response from social media. Imagine, losing the high ground to social media.
AFC Might be Hard to Pin Down
The three top picks at Caesars to win the AFC lost in Week 1:
The Chiefs (+360) fell to the Lions, 21-20
The Bills (+550) lost to the Rodgers-less Jets, 22-16, in OT
The Bengals (+700) were thumped by the Browns, 24-3
That’s the (Sunday) Ticket
Let’s not get too bogged down with technobabble on how stuff happening on an athletic field gets to your television screen. (It’s called latency and it’s a massive big deal, actually).
But the point is, signals with pictures are way slower than purely digital ones, which for the purpose of this newsletter means your sportsbook app probably isn’t matching up with your TV.
With Sunday Ticket debuting this week on YouTubeTV, did you experience excessive delays — even ones through commercials — that ruined your in-game betting experience? (And if so, shoot us a comment and explain more)
All this continues to make Caesars’ live in-gaming stream of certain NFL games on its sports betting app something to watch for the future.
Trading Bets Like Stocks is Now Possible With WagerWire, Which Has a Deal with Betr
Read this for the backstory and then let us know …
Between the Lines …
Remember how European soccer teams were beginning to distance themselves from gambling companies to avoid government regulation and do the right thing for the impressionable youth of their respective nations?
Yeah, never mind. With gambling sponsorships still in play through the 2025-26 season in the English Premier League, some clubs added “front-of-shirt” betting sponsors before this campaign began in August.
Here’s an even cringier update from Spain. Real Madrid and third-year sponsor SportyBet launched this ad campaign in Africa. SportyBet also has a partnership with Manchester United in the EPL.
According to a report from GeoComply, a geo-location firm that insures bettors are within legal jurisdictions: 242.3 million geolocation transactions were made in regulated online American markets in Week 1 of the NFL season, representing a 56% increase from the same time period in 2022. Much of that can be attributed to new states coming on board, including football-mad Ohio, Massachusetts, and Maryland.
But check this out: When the underdog Lions took the lead on Thursday Night Football, mobile bettors went scurrying for some new lines, apparently. Said GeoComply: “The first game of the 2023 season set the tone for what we expect to see all season with premiere matchups. The upstart Detroit Lions went back and forth with the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs on Thursday night. When the Lions scored the first touchdown of the game, and of the season, GeoComply saw a massive spike in traffic totaling 4,200 transactions per second immediately following the score! That is our highest rate of volume throughout the first week of NFL games ever.”
And finally, don’t forget to review Vikings vs. Eagles odds and props before hammering TNF wagers at your sports betting app of choice.
Good luck and see you next week!
by Brant James
Senior Writer