GeoComply data shows strong sports betting demand in newly legalized Kentucky

While residents of Kentucky likely won’t be able to wager on sports from within their own borders until January 2024 at the earliest, there’s no shortage of demand for sports betting in the Bluegrass State, according to recent data from GeoComply.

The geolocation and compliance solutions firm, which monitors and enforces geofencing regulations to ensure users are accessing online sportsbooks from legal jurisdictions, tracked 1.28 million geolocation checks from inside Kentucky during the month of March.

While each of those pings – which came from 62,000 unique player accounts located in Kentucky – were flagged and ultimately prevented from accessing the sportsbooks in neighboring states they were attempting to reach, the data only underscores the appetite for sports betting among Kentuckians.

Sports betting officially became legal in Kentucky on March 31, when Governor Andy Beshear signed into law a bill that will regulate both retail and online sportsbooks via the state’s nine licensed horse tracks.

The state is projected to make as much as $23m annually from sports betting, which will be taxed at a 9.75% rate for retail operators and 14.25% for online.

Kentucky, which became the 37th US jurisdiction to legalize online sports betting since the fall of PASPA in 2018, will join six of its neighboring states in offering legalized wagering once it goes live.

The GeoComply data shows that Kentucky residents are already traveling to some of those states en masse for betting purposes, as 41% of the one million-plus geolocation checks were on Ohio sportsbooks, while 38.6% were attempting to access regulated sportsbooks in Indiana.

Louisville, Kentucky’s biggest city by population, sits directly on the southern border of Indiana.

Similar to other states, Kentucky’s existing DFS market will figure to provide a leg up to industry leaders FanDuel and DraftKings when sports betting ultimately launches.