A Few Hiccups on First Week of Legal NFL Betting

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The legalization of sports betting was heralded as the dawn of a new era months ago, as gamblers crowded Monmouth Park Racetrack and Atlantic City to place bets on baseball and the World Cup.

But the Meadowlands Racetrack, which houses FanDuel Sportsbook, had been even more focused on Sunday’s start of the National Football League season, when its status as the only legal sports-betting venue in the country to share a parking lot with a professional sports stadium was on full display.

“This is the best day of my whole life,” said Joe Esposito, 52, who came from Springfield, New Jersey, to place a range of bets, including $1,000 on the Jacksonville Jaguars to win the Super Bowl. “I’ve been in sports gambling my whole life. I’ve lost millions of dollars doing it. But this is a place you can do it legitimately. And it’s right near the stadium!”

The NFL, despite its publicly stated aversion to gambling, is by far the most popular sport for bettors. Since 1992, more than $30 billion has been bet on football in Nevada, which legalized sports betting decades before New Jersey’s law changed in June, according to the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. The next closest sport is basketball, with $19 billion bet in Nevada since 1992.

So it would seem that the Meadowlands was perfectly situated to capitalize on its unique locale — and maybe even positioned to become a postgame alternative to inching along with the morass of cars that can sometimes wait more than an hour just to exit the parking lot.

Mike Ludwig, a New York Giants season ticket holder who lives in Boston, had a drink in hand at the Meadowlands Racetrack sports bar after watching the Giants lose to the Jaguars, 20-15.

“I’m coming from Boston to see the Giants, and have some time to kill before heading over to Penn Station. And I know that the traffic is going to be terrible going back,” said Ludwig, 41. “So I came here.”

The proximity to MetLife Stadium, where the Giants and New York Jets play, was not without first-week hiccups. Giants games require fans to hold parking passes to help manage tailgate crowds. The same rules now applied to those who arrived only to place bets at FanDuel, which was unwelcome news to those without game tickets.

“I explained to them I was going to have all of them fired,” said Rose Porch, 51, who made the early morning trek from Hudson County, about the parking attendants who told her she could not enter. “I was going to go to all their bosses and have them fired for lying because I came all the way from Bayonne and I didn’t think that was fair to me.”

Porch was able to charm her way into a parking spot and get in some bets before heading back home to watch her team, the Denver Broncos. (“I’m not a Giants fan. Wrong Manning.”)

Regardless, a captive sports audience of 82,500 packed into the stadium and proved an enticing opportunity for the new sports book.

To ease the mile-long slog across the cold, damp parking lot, FanDuel chartered buses to ferry would-be bettors through the rain.

Giants fans began arriving in the breakfast hours, some eager to put down an early bet before heading out into the chilly September Sunday, prepared to enjoy a tailgate.

“This is actually a beer koozie. I can fit like four to five beers in here,” said Mike Negley, a Giants season ticket holder from Ramsey, New Jersey, about the thin sling that hung over his shoulder. It looked like a folding chair, and it caused no issues at the sports bar.

The floor of FanDuel was a sea of blue and white Giants jerseys. So while FanDuel has no allegiance to the Giants or any other team, this Sunday the crowd was without a doubt pro-New York.

“I just almost had a fist fight with a Giants fan,” said Esposito. “I was holding court here, and they wanted my best pick of the day. I said I’m going to be honest, my best pick of the day is the Jaguars.”

But the first Sunday of betting on NFL games was not confined to the blue-hued sports bar inside the Meadowlands Racetrack.

FanDuel, Draft Kings and others have launched mobile apps, where users can bet from their cellphones from anywhere in New Jersey, including from their seats at the game.

“I was supposed to go to the sports book earlier but it was just easier to do it from my phone,” said Mike Bonaventure, 35, as he shielded himself from the rain at an overhang near section 106 at the stadium.

Bonaventure had bet on the Giants to win, but as he watched a Giants drive fizzle late in the third quarter, with New York still losing 13-9, he mused over a few more mobile bets on the second slate of Sunday’s games.

“Once everyone realizes they can do it from their phone, everyone’s going to have money on this game,” he said. “And we’ll all go broke.”