The Corona virus pandemic could cost sportsbooks in the United States a whopping $200 million in revenue and $2 billion in handle, according to a report in Legal Sports betting. Almost every sports organization around the world has suspended, delayed or cancelled play, and this will cause a direct hit on the global sports book industry – the US included.
The first event to take a giant loss will no doubt be March Madness, the common name for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. US sportsbooks in particular rely heavily on the first two rounds of the tournament, and the announcement last week that the NCAA is cancelling the tournaments altogether, will deal a heavy blow to the industry.
In a statement made on Thursday, the NCAA said: “This decision is based on the evolving COVID-19 public health threat, our ability to ensure the events do not contribute to spread of the pandemic, and the impracticality of hosting such events at any time during this academic year given ongoing decisions by other entities.”
The country’s most established sports betting market, Nevada, traditionally has March accounting for over 11% of its annual revenue. If we look at the numbers resulting from the cancellation of sports events as large as March Madness, it is not far-fetched to predict that the US sports betting market will lose literally hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of COVID-19.