Want to legally bet on the Super Bowl? For North Carolinians, Virginia is for gamblers

By Brian Murphy, WRAL sports reporter

Raleigh, N.C. — Virginia is for lovers, the saying goes. And now, apparently, for North Carolina sports bettors, too.

Take Lauren Carrell, a Raleigh woman who has been driving just over the Virginia border to legally bet on the NFL playoffs through mobile apps. It's a trip she will make again before Sunday's Super Bowl.

"The only thing then I have to do is drive 45, 50 minutes to Virginia, go to the rest stop right there and then place everything and drive back," she told WRAL this week during an interview at her home.

Virginia legalized online sports gambling in April 2020, and it went live in January 2021. North Carolina allows in-person sports betting at three tribal casinos, but lawmakers defeated a bill to legalize sports betting on mobile and electronic devices by a single vote in the state House last year.

Carrell is not alone in making the trip to Virginia, according to GeoComply, a cybersecurity company that focuses on geolocation security. The company is licensed in Virginia and other states where online gambling is legal to ensure that bettors are physically located in a legal state.

The company found more than 1.6 million attempted log-ins to legal sportsbooks in the United States since the beginning of this NFL season in September. Those checks were associated with about 160,000 unique sportsbook user accounts.

"We would prevent them from placing a bet," said John Pappas, senior vice president for government and public affairs at GeoComply. "We wouldn't prevent them from going on the app and looking at a line or seeing what their balance is or maybe even funding their account. ... But in order to place a bet, we would have to geolocate the individual and ensure they are in the proper state."

Of the geolocation checks originating in North Carolina, more than 60% were for a sportsbooks in Virginia. And GeoComply has tracked more than 5,000 checks from North Carolina that then were in Virginia, suggesting a lot of cross-border wagering. The location services are precise enough to distinguish who is on what side of the border, Pappas said.

"We see people cross the border very regularly to go into a legal state and place a bet," Pappas said. "The way we time it is if we see the person log into a state that is not legal and then we would calculate, ‘Did that device or account get located in a legal state in a meaningful amount of time?’"

In other words, bettors doing precisely what Carrell has done throughout the playoffs – check in while in North Carolina to see lines and figure out her bets, then drive to Virginia to place them.

A huge football fan and fan of former quarterback Peyton Manning, Carrell got very into fantasy football. But when the NFL reaches the playoffs, fantasy football leagues are typically over.

"I don't really care about any of these teams,” she said. “I don't care who wins. If I have $5, $10 on something, I would actually care."

So when she was visiting family in New York, a state with legalized online sports betting, she signed up for a few accounts. When she travels for business to Illinois, another state where online sports betting is legal, she'll place some bets.

"When you come back to North Carolina, you can't do that," Carrell said. So she began the trips to Virginia. "I'll do that on Saturday and Sunday during the playoffs, get everything entered and then I have everything to watch."

She prefers player props, such as which player will score a touchdown or have more or less than a certain number of receiving yards or rushing yards.

"I do really fun ones, where I'll do $1 or $2 on a bunch of different random players getting a touchdown and then hope I'm going to hit a ridiculous payout," she said.

She won't be alone in hoping for specific outcomes on Sunday.

Fueled by the proliferation of states legalizing online sports betting, more than 50 million American adults are expected to bet $16 billion on this year's Super Bowl between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs, according to a survey by the American Gaming Association. About 30 million are expected to place a traditional wager online, through a retail sportsbook or with a bookie, up 66% from 2022, according to the AGA. About 28 million plan to bet casually with friends or in a pool or squares contest.

Thirty-four states, including North Carolina, allow some form of legal sports gambling and 26, including Washington, D.C., have legalized online sports betting. A 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision opened the door for most states to allow sports betting.

North Carolina lawmakers are expected to introduce legislation to legalize online sports betting within the next few weeks, in part to recapture some of the revenue now lost to other states. Legislative supporters believe they have the votes. Opponents from both parties rallied to stop the bill last year, citing societal costs associated with problem gambling and moral concerns, and they will try to do so again.

Pappas — who spoke to lawmakers in Vermont this week about, in part, the number of bettors from the state who go to New York to place wagers — said his company is not directly lobbying on the bill in North Carolina.

"What we are is really a resource, so that lawmakers know that if this is something they want to do, it can be appropriately regulated," he said. "That the bets will happen within the state, that age and identity will be confirmed."

He said his company provides those services as well as anti-fraud tools to protect consumers and the operators.

Carrell is hoping that North Carolina lawmakers pass the legislation this year — and that her trips to Virginia are soon a thing of the past.

"Let's not lose by one vote again," she said. "Let's legalize it so we can all enjoy the playoffs next year."