The answer is basketball, of course.
Or maybe football, depending upon how you slice and dice the data. In either case, baseball runs a steady third in the recently legitimized world of sports betting, where Americans wagered an estimated $120 billion in 2023.
Federally legalized six years ago, the young industry continues to explode across the U.S. landscape, with Vermont and North Carolina approving their rules in January and March, respectively. But the stuttering ramp-up, battered by a pandemic and jumbled by a state-by-state rollout, has made the industry difficult to track.
As the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks wrestled through the NBA finals this past week, advertising for the gambling industry’s two heavyweights, DraftKings and FanDuel-owner Flutter Entertainment was in overdrive.
