After decades of missing out on the opportunity to enjoy a good sporting event or online casino game and win money from it through online bets, residents of The Wolverine State can finally participate in online gambling activities.
The State of Michigan permitted the launch of legal online gambling within its borders at noon on Friday, 22nd January 2021. The timing of this development was perfect, especially for sports betting, because of the lineup for that weekend. For instance, NFL conference championship games were live and Michigan sports bettors got to watch and place wagers.
Some people have theorized that the license to operate given to some sport betting giants in the state was done in a bid to help the gambling industry recover faster from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whatever the reason is, online betting statistics within the first two weeks of this launch clearly show that Michigan is well on its way to becoming one of the foremost states in the US with thriving online gaming industry.
10 online casinos and sportsbooks were approved to launch that Friday by The Michigan Gaming Control Board (MGCB), which will now regulate their activities going forward. A new round of operators was added to these the following week. Seeing how things are going, it is only expected that we’ll see more online gambling operators trooping into the market.
Industry experts predicted that there would be an impressive response from gamblers across the state after the launch. Their projection was based on the residents’ attitudes to prior legal gambling activities in the state, the time of the launch of the casinos, and the anticipation that had built up over time. Many reports have come in about the gamblers’ activities so far in Michigan and they have shown that these predictions were right.
BetMGM’s CEO, Adam Greenblatt, confirmed that the platform’s launch in Michigan was their “strongest launch yet.” BetMGM Michigan reported that over 200,000 successful logins were recorded on their platform and more than 2 million spins were seen, all within the first seven hours of being launched in the state.
However, some customers complained of problems with the BetMGM app. A representative from the company affirmed that there were glitches at some point, but it was as a result of unusually high traffic. He said that the problem was rectified the same day.
Google Trends were analyzed by Michigan Sharp, a website dedicated to the online gambling space in Michigan. They discovered that the launch of online sports betting in the state generated more interest than any previously recorded launch within the past year.
Furthermore, GeoComply, a company that facilitates geolocation tracking for many online gaming operators also announced that over 7.5 million online gambling transactions were recorded in Virginia and Michigan. Virginia has only two online operators, compared to Michigan’s ten at the time of launch, hence, the location with the higher percentage is obvious.
Since virtually every bettor in the state of Michigan would be a first-timer, there was an avalanche of bonuses being claimed on all the platforms. Bettors who could not join the thousands that flooded the Michigan online casinos and sportsbook did so the following week. Many of the operators, having had the experience of the previous week could manage them better.
The Michigan Gaming Control Board has not released reports on the revenue generated so far, but they have corroborated reports of a large influx of players into the online gambling space since the Michigan online casino launch.
If you live in Michigan and are yet to jump on the wave of excitement sweeping through the Michigan online gaming world, you’re not too late. There are still loads of bonuses to be won and more than enough games and sports betting features to explore.
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