“Location, location, location” isn’t restricted to the real estate business.
PointsBet opened its third and last off-track betting retail sportsbook in Illinois earlier this month at the Crazy Pour in Villa Park, approximately 20 miles west of downtown Chicago and roughly the same distance from Hawthorne Race Course, where the main sportsbook currently operates and a'racino will eventually be built. Crazy Pour joins Hawthorne-tethered OTBs in Crestwood and Prospect Heights that have been retrofitted to add sports wagering capabilities, as allowed in the 2019 gaming expansion bill that legalized sports wagering in the state.
Illinois’ plethora of mobile sportstbooks recently made it the fourth state, along with New York, New Jersey, and Nevada, to surpass $1 billion in monthly handle in both October and November. Its retail game, meanwhile, has been solid since the first bets were placed in March 2020, days before the COVID-19 pandemic started — and that’s where Crazy Pour comes into play.
Through the first 11 months of 2022, with no pandemic-related restrictions on capacity, brick-and-mortar sportsbooks statewide have surpassed $350 million in handle and will be more than double the 2021 total when the Illinois Gaming Board releases figures for December. Combined in-person wagering at Hawthorne and its two OTB sites have totaled close to $23.1 million and generated nearly $1.8 million in revenue in 2022, putting expectations on Crazy Pour to make an immediate impact.