Statewide legal sports betting underway in North Carolina

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Mobile and online sports wagering across North Carolina took off on Monday, as several licensed gambling operators started taking bets nine months after legislation to authorize such activity statewide became law.

Some of the interactive sports wagering operators, which include big names in the growing field of legalized gambling, and their affiliates held special events to highlight the new gambling options in the nation's ninth-largest state. North Carolina is now the 30th state, along with the District of Columbia, to offer mobile sports betting, according to the American Gaming Association.

Registered customers within the state’s borders can bet on professional, college or Olympic-style sports.

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"North Carolina is a state that we’ve been really dying to get into for a couple of years now," DraftKings Chief Commercial Officer Jeremy Elbaum said at a public event at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, where retired Carolina Panthers player Greg Olsen placed a ceremonial first online bet. "The way the sports calendar works here, the love for college, the love for NASCAR specifically and obviously the other major sports, has made this a key state for us."

The North Carolina State Lottery Commission, directed in the June 2023 law authorizing the games to license operators and set rules, announced several weeks ago that wagering on mobile devices and computers would begin at noon Monday. The start date — on the eve of the popular Atlantic Coast Conference men’s basketball tournament — was not lost on sports enthusiasts.

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