Nevada’s only independent sportsbook marked its one-year anniversary Saturday, ahead of schedule in terms of the number of casinos where it’s operating a Boomer’s Sportsbook.
In July, the Nevada Gaming Commission approved Boomer’s, headed by CEO Joe Asher ,for its 15th and 16th locations. This coming Wednesday before the Nevada Gaming Control Board, Asher is seeking a recommendation for approval to expand to downtown Las Vegas at the Four Queens Hotel & Casino and Binion’s Gambling Hall & Hotel. If agreed to by the Nevada Gaming Commission later this month, that would make the 17th and 18th approved by regulators.
Ahead of Boomer’s launching on Aug. 1, 2025, at the Commercial Casino in Elko and a couple of days later at the Ellis Island Casino Hotel just off the Las Vegas Strip, Asher said he hoped to be in 10 casinos within a year and 25 to 30 in total.
“I feel pretty good about where we are,” said Asher. “It’s gone pretty well, but we have a long way to go. For football season, we’ll have 18 (sportsbooks open).”
The goal is to open Four Queens and Binion’s on Sept. 1, and Asher said there have been a lot of requests from people to sign up for their mobile app and make deposits downtown. Boomer’s plans to take over for William Hill at the end of August. “An awful lot of people have heard about Boomer’s. They’ve read about us in the press, seen the billboards, heard it on the radio, or seen it on social media, but haven’t made the trip to (a sportsbook) to sign up for their mobile app.”
Besides the 16 approved and two pending before regulators, Asher said signed deals with three other casinos will go up for regulatory approval in the fall.
“There’s more to come, so that part of the business has gone really well,” Asher said. “A bunch of others are in the pipeline too. There will be more to come as we finish out this year. We expect to bring more on board next year when their current agreements with William Hill expire.”
The three in the works to be added this fall are outside of Las Vegas, as Boomer’s continues to fill out a statewide footprint. Two are in northern Nevada and one is in central Nevada.
“We’re hustling,” Asher said. “We’re constantly chasing people and letting them hear our pitch. We’re working hard to continue to grow. I’ve had conversations with some of the biggest properties and of course they are going to take a wait-and-see approach. We continue to be ambitious and nothing is off limits, as long as it’s in the state of Nevada.”
Markets Boomer’s isn’t in yet are Pahrump, Laughlin, Wendover, Mesquite, and Ely, but Asher said they’re on the radar screen.
Asher said sports betting in Nevada is a competitive market and it’s important to continue to sign up customers. Their business model is Nevada residents, rather than tourists.
“We talk about the B-to-B part of the business, but at the B-to-C level, we’re working hard to sign up more customers,” Asher said. “We have to get folks to go to the retail locations to sign up. Most people already have at least one sports betting app, so we’ve got to make it worth their while to sign up for the Boomer’s app. We find that once we get people to sign up, they tend to be very happy with the product. We do a lot of customer outreach and call customers and ask what they like and what we should try to do differently. Once we get the customer, we keep them and do well, but we have to keep signing people up. Having more locations is critical to that, because you make it that much easier to go sign up.”
To do that, Boomer’s strategy is to offer a lower-cost product to customers, hence -105 for NFL wagers instead of the traditional -110. Boomer’s also offers bigger payouts on parlays, he said.
“William Hill and Caesars have this big corporate initiative to raise their margins up to 10%,” Asher said. “They’ve decided to charge customers more for their product. What we’re doing is an attraction for consumers, and we’re doing a lot of promotions with Nevada-focused teams like the Golden Knights. We’re going to continue to take advantage that we’re a Nevada-only business.”
Asher said their product offering is deep and customers have access to whatever they want to bet. There’s even Japanese and Korean baseball.
“Having that deep product offering is a focus for us,” Asher said. “If we get the person to come and sign up and deposit money into their account, they tend to be pretty sticky because they find it’s a pretty rich offering.”
