North Carolina Sports Betting Off To Roaring Start

Early sports betting numbers out of North Carolina are outstanding, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, including our best sports betting apps. After all, the Tar Heel State market is viewed as and will continue to be viewed as a solid addition to the American legal sports betting family.

On Wednesday, Vancouver-based GeoComply, a geolocation firm tasked with tracking transactions in the ever-growing U.S. legal sports betting market, released some data gathered from the first 48 hours after the launch of North Carolina sports betting apps. According to a post from the company on X, the figures are impressive.

The early successes are a product of a North Carolina sports betting fanbase ripe for the sports betting picking and a regulatory body that has gone to school on what worked and didn’t work in almost 40 existing U.S. legal sports betting jurisdictions.

As Lindsay Slader, GeoComply’s senior vice president of compliance, said in a press release Wednesday, “It’s early, but North Carolina is already delivering on lawmaker expectations when they legalized online sports betting last year. The state’s well-structured approach to mobile sports betting safeguards consumers and opens up significant revenue streams. With March Madness around the corner, we are excited to see continued growth.”

The findings

GeoComply identified more than 5.3 million geolocation checks in the first 48 hours after North Carolina's legal sports betting scene launched. It is an industry that includes:

• bet365 partnered with the Charlotte Hornets
• BetMGM partnered with Charlotte Motor Speedway
• DraftKings partnered with NASCAR
• Fanatics Betting and Gaming partnered with the Carolina Hurricanes
• FanDuel partnered with the PGA Tour and the Carolina Panthers
• PENN Sports Interactive (ESPN BET) partnered with Quail Hollow Club 
• Underdog Sportsbook partnered with McConnell Golf

Caesars Sportsbook is also live in the state under an operator license.

Sports fans and those wanting to participate in America's newest legal sports betting industry were obviously eager to take advantage of the healthy North Carolina sportsbook promos.

A total of 370,000 active sports betting accounts in North Carolina were responsible for the 3.5 million geolocation checks, meaning that bettors were not only placing wagers but also signing up for one of two or more North Carolina sports betting sites.

By comparison

Virginia, a similar-sized sports betting state as North Carolina, saw about half of the sports betting activity during its first 48 hours of operation over the same period of time. The number of accounts signed up for was just under one-third of what North Carolina accomplished from Monday to Wednesday of this week.

Virginia saw about two million geolocation checks in its first 48 hours of operation, and 134,000 users signed up for a legal sports betting account.

Looking ahead

March Madness is expected to be an enormous draw in the basketball-crazed Tar Heel State. America's ninth-most populous state, with 10.7 million residents and professional sports teams the NFL's Carolina Panthers, the NBA's Charlotte Hornets, and the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes, is expected to keep the roll going and enter the Top-10 most successful U.S. legal sports betting states.

Early estimates were that between $8 million and $24 million in tax revenue would be generated for needy state and local coffers in its first year of operation. Given the obvious early interest in the new platform, the high side of the projections could benefit programs.

Count North Carolina as yet another example of how to successfully roll out a legal sports betting platform and what it could mean to a given state. It should act as motivation to its two southerly border neighbors South Carolina and Georgia to finally legalize and launch their own legal sports wagering platforms.