Nearby states up the ante on sports betting
Feb. 11—SEABROOK — Come March, Daniel Giadone will be able to make sports bets from his house 40 miles away in Massachusetts, but he expects to continue to drive an hour to the sportsbook in Seabrook.
"I don't want to make things too easy for myself," Giadone said after losing a bet on "some Finnish hockey game that I didn't know the names of the teams."
On the other hand, once Maine starts sports betting — which could be as soon as June — Maine resident Mike Lamontagne might give up his 80-minute drive each way to make sports bets at The Brook, a casino and sportsbook that sits where the old Seabrook Greyhound Park first took bets a half-century ago.
"It'd be a lot closer for me. I'd probably bet in Maine just because of the traveling," Lamontagne said after placing a bet on the favored Philadelphia Eagles to win the Super Bowl.
Massachusetts and other states, including Maine, are angling to capture a slice of the sports betting pie now going to New Hampshire. In just a year's time, Massachusetts residents drove to New Hampshire to legally bet an estimated $150 million-plus on sports via their smartphones. (Bettors must be physically in the state to place a DraftKings mobile bet.)
With Massachusetts to begin mobile sports betting March 10 after recently starting such betting at three casinos, New Hampshire officials and sports betting experts don't know how much of that money is at risk of sliding south of the border.
"We have to expect some impact from Massachusetts launching its own sports betting system," said Charlie McIntyre, executive director of the New Hampshire Lottery, which regulates sports betting.
"That said, we are confident in the system we have established and we are confident we will be able to minimize any impact from other states bringing sports betting online," he said in an email.
New Hampshire's sports wagering is "apt to go down a little bit," said Daniel Wallach, an adjunct professor at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law in Concord and founder of a law firm devoted exclusively to sports wagering and gaming law.
But, Wallach said, "New Hampshire shouldn't see any significant change in its online sports handle. They had a two-year head start in building their loyalty."
Vermont legislators also recently introduced a bill to allow mobile sports betting.
Since New Hampshire launched sports betting in December 2019, bettors have wagered nearly $2 billion. More than $62 million of that has gone to support education, according to the New Hampshire Lottery.
In New Hampshire, nearly 4 of every 5 dollars bet on sports for the 12 months ending last June 30 was done via mobile betting.
Massachusetts residents wagered about a quarter of the money via mobile.
Residents in Maine and Vermont accounted for 2% and 1%, respectively, of New Hampshire's overall mobile betting, according to lottery officials.
Michael McCann, founding director of the UNH Law Sports and Entertainment Law Institute, said New Hampshire won't escape unscathed.
"There's no question Massachusetts offering sports betting, albeit in its own way, probably will take some business away from New Hampshire," McCann said.
But revenue losses won't happen "overnight," he said. "It takes a while to create an established practice."
Last year, bettors in New Hampshire wagered $7.7 million on the Super Bowl alone.
Betting in person
A mile off Interstate 95, you could play the license plate bingo game in the parking lot of The Brook, the name a nod to the town and the former track's moniker.
A Honda CR-V with Florida plates parked next to a Chevy four-door sedan with New York plates. A Toyota Tundra wearing Alaska tags was nearby.
One row of 25 vehicles contained 15 from Massachusetts, five from New Hampshire, four from Maine and one from Alaska.
"We want to take out-of-state wallet, and I think we've been pretty effective there as well, partially because of our unique location on the border but also tremendous access to the (Interstate) 95 corridor, so we had that advantage," said Andre Carrier, CEO of The Brook.
The Seabrook business, which employs more than 250, not only offers sports gambling, but poker, live table games and casino gaming machines.
About 40% of all bettors at The Brook come from Massachusetts, the same percentage as from New Hampshire. Maine residents make up another 11%.
Half of the sports bettors are from Massachusetts, followed by 30% from New Hampshire, 10% from Maine and 10% from other places.
"I don't think the story has been written as of yet as it pertains to whether or not the experience is better for sports bettors in New Hampshire or Massachusetts," Carrier said in a phone interview from his Las Vegas office last week.
"I think we're really early in the first chapter to say one is going to clearly win out over the other," he said. "There's proximity; there's convenience, but do people drive to get further to get lower-cost gasoline? Yeah, all of the time."
Comfort vs. convenience
A father and son from Danvers, Mass., stood at adjoining sports betting kiosks at The Brook last Monday, a week after three casinos in Massachusetts began accepting sports wagers.
"I'll probably still come here," said the father, dressed in a Celtics jacket and betting on his NBA team. "It's nice to come here and make bets."
His adult son said a person can get accustomed to a place, but he left open the option of betting on his phone.
"Online might be cool," he said.
Men make up more than 90% of sports bettors at The Brook, with the "heart of that lineup" customers between the ages of 29 and 60, according to Carrier.
The Seabrook location has 25 sports betting kiosks and five over-the-counter sports betting windows.
Most gamblers come armed with a fixed budget, Carrier said. If a person sets a $38 budget, he will bet plus or minus $5 that amount.
"Just because there's more places that you can play and more ways you can play, that gambling budget will not change," Carrier said. "It just means they might divide it between going to Everett and going to The Brook or betting online and going to The Brook, but it will still be 38 bucks."
Steve from Massachusetts has been coming to Seabrook since greyhounds raced there in the 1970s.
"If I want to place a sports bet, it's easier to drive here than go there" — to the Encore Boston Harbor in Everett, Mass., which recently started sports betting, he said.
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission said it "does not have any research projecting estimates of sports wagering by non-Massachusetts residents or research on how much money Massachusetts residents may have wagered on sports while in New Hampshire," said spokesman Tom Mills.
Anthony from Boston's North End likes coming to Seabrook to bet on horse racing on Mondays or Tuesdays. He placed a bet on a college game while there Monday.
If he wasn't already there for the horse racing, which is counted separately from sports betting, Anthony said he would bet sports at the Encore — five minutes from his house.
"While I'm here, I'm putting in a sports bet," he said.
Jim Hayden was not there to bet on football but to spend hours betting on horses as he often does on Mondays and Wednesdays.
The Durham resident attended the first greyhound race at Seabrook in 1973 and was there when live racing ended in 2010.
Today, horse racing "gets me out of the house," said Hayden, a former business owner who turns 85 next month.
He won the first race of his daily double and wondered what the second race at Mahoning Valley Race Course in Ohio would bring.
A potentially bigger threat
Legislators in New Hampshire last month held a hearing on a bill that in 2024 would legalize online gaming and use the state's proceeds to offer free tuition to income-eligible students at two-year colleges in New Hampshire.
The Senate Ways and Means Committee last week recommended passage of the bill, with an amendment that named specific games that could be offered "including but not limited to poker, blackjack, cards, roulette, craps, baccarat or other style games in which an individual wagers money or something of monetary value for the opportunity to win money or something of monetary value" played via computer or mobile devices.
While 33 states allow sports betting, only six states offer online gaming, sometimes referred to as iGaming.
"I see it as the next step for regulated gaming in New Hampshire," said Wallach, of the Franklin Pierce law school.
"IGaming could be a huge differentiator for New Hampshire. No other state in New England offers iGaming," Wallach said.
"In terms of state tax collections, iGaming generates more tax revenues than sports betting in states that have both," Wallach said, citing New Jersey as an example.
The Brook's Carrier said New Hampshire is still digesting sports betting.
"My sense is that it's early in the game for New Hampshire to pick up another core competency, because what it takes to be successful with online casinos is different than what it takes to be successful in bricks and mortars, and this is a state that was built on charity casinos and so those questions still need to be questioned on how it would affect charity income," he said.
Manchester developer Dick Anagnost, who founded the Filotimo Casino & Restaurant, with locations in Manchester and Dover, said it would hurt his places.
"IGaming would kill bricks and mortar," Anagnost said.
The Brook and Filotimo operate under the state's charitable gaming law, which requires 35% of all casino gaming proceeds to be donated to charity.
Anagnost's two casinos are the only other two places in New Hampshire that people may legally bet sports in person.
Massachusetts allowing sports betting will have a "very minimal" impact on his operations, Anagnost said.
That's because Massachusetts accounts for less than 5% of his Manchester bettors, and virtually none of his clientele in Dover, where Maine bettors make up 8%.
Over the past three years, 21 communities, including Manchester, Nashua, Berlin and Franklin, have approved retail sportsbooks. The state already has approved DraftKings to operate as many as 10 locations.
"The New Hampshire Lottery is actively evaluating potential future locations, but there are no definite plans in the works," McIntyre said.
Attracting tourists
Maine is working toward allowing both mobile and brick-and-mortar sportsbooks later this year, with no date certain.
Luring summer tourists to bet "is why I would like to see a June-July soft opening," said Milton Champion, executive director of the State of Maine Gambling Control Unit.
"It'd be kind of neat to see someone sitting by a campfire, and he bets on a Boston Red Sox game," Champion said.
He said gamblers who register for DraftKings in one state can use their same accounts in other states that allow DraftKings.
"When you're in Maine, while you wager while they're in the state of Maine, Maine gets the tax," Champion said.
The process works the same way in New Hampshire.
The Brook counts on tourists and beachgoers during the summer, giving people another option to spend a rainy day or add another activity.
"After dark, people (are dressed) like they're at the beach," Carrier said.
Going home a winnah
Hayden, the Durham octogenarian, missed on the back end of his daily double.
But he struck gold in another race at Mahoning Valley, picking the exact order of finish for the first three horses for a $225 payout.
Hayden planned to leave the day a winner.
"You might go two or three days and have luck," he said.
