LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — College football is officially back which means the summer sports betting drought is over and Arkansas casinos are preparing for a big influx in sports bets made.
"Looking back at 2023, in July of 2023 total sports wagers were about $16 million and that was, you know, it's a slow month. It's in the summer. You fast forward to the heart of football season and go to November. We went from $16 million wagered in July to $55 million wagered in November," said Scott Hardin, a spokesperson for the Arkansas Department of Finance.
This is the third football season and second full year of legalized sports betting in the state, and since its legalization it keeps getting bigger and bigger every season.
"Having a year where Arkansans wager half a billion dollars on sports. And to put that in perspective, if you go back to 2022 the total is $186 million for the year. So this is an industry that's really continuing to take off," Hardin said.
However, with that comes the danger of addiction. When Arkansans voted to legalize sports betting the state had a clause in there to help those gambling hotlines.
"Arkansas may not even realize this, but when they approved sports betting, when they went to the polls back in November of 2018 and said 'yes' to casino gaming, which included sports betting, there was a line in there that said the state is required to commit $200,000 every year to this problem gambling program, treatment, education," Hardin explained.
That's really important for those hotlines, especially now as calls to the Arkansas Problem Gambling Council are starting to increase.
"Starting in the month late August, September, we do see an increase of calls from the low, we say, from the summer months, on average, the Arkansas Problem Gambling Council receives about 300 calls that should probably increase another 10 to 15 percent," said Vena Schexnayder, the Executive Director for the Arkansas Problem Gambling Council.
However, Carlton Saffa with Bet Saracen says online gambling has given his casino a chance to check up and make sure no one is over gambling.
"At Bet Saracen, sports betting is at the core of our business. You know, we love online gambling for a couple of reasons. One, it is accountable, right? There's no hiding. It's not a cash business, so we know who our customers are. There's also tremendous value in online gambling because we can use algorithmic machine learning, basically AI, to determine when we might have someone who's a problem gambler," Saffa said.
Saffa explained that Bet Saracen does that because they feel like they have an obligation to their customers.
"We put those features in place because responsible gaming is important. So at our casino, for example, we'll have 150,000 people a month walk through those doors. No single customer is worth the trouble of the wrecked lives, the bad publicity that comes with it and all of the nightmares, right? So we have an obligation in the casino business to turn away folks who, frankly, have a problem," Saffa said.
If you or a loved one has a gambling problem, you can call 1-800-Gambler to get help.
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