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The start of the regular NFL season was shaky at best for both online sportsbooks and the Vegas books with much smaller bets and less volume compared to past years. 2010 Super Bowl betting was expected to give a much needed jolt.
"Traffic is an indicator," said Payton O'Brien, Senior Editor for the Gambling911.com website. "Traffic is up substantially at the Gambling911.com site from this time last year."
Much of that traffic is related to the upcoming Super Bowl.
The United States knew for sure it had entered a recession during a football game last February, writes David Sweet of NBC Sports.
How so? Super Bowl wagers in Nevada's sports books dropped more than 11 percent compared to the previous year. At $81.5 million, the Pittsburgh-Arizona thriller - a 27-23 Steelers victory - marked the lowest handle (money bet on a contest) for the bookies since 2004. The drop in six-figure bets in particular jarred oddsmakers.
"The online sportsbooks at that time were still doing quite well," O'Brien said. Their numbers continued strong right up until the Kentucky Derby, where record conversions were reported from the Gambling911.com website. "June through much of the regular NFL season numbers had dropped off and a recovery is only now starting to be realized."
"Our handle's been real strong since the middle of November," said Jay Rood, race and sports book director for MGM Mirage. "The second playoff weekend, we weren't expecting the crowd we had.
"The betting was off (in Las Vegas) last year during the Super Bowl. But there's no sense that we'll be impacted significantly by the economy this year."
The Super Bowl matchup always affects the amount of wagering, but it doesn't drive betting. Though Pittsburgh was involved in the highest handle ever, it also played during last year's big decline, Sweet points out.
Even with online sports betting now available, Vegas has witnessed a gradual increase in wagering on the Super Bowl since 1989, from $50 million to $94.5 million in 2006. That number has dwindled over the past two years, a result of the economic decline perhaps.
Incidentally, a third of all 2010 Super Bowl bets are likely to be prop-related.
Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com
