It’s been 18 months since Circa Sports‘ arrival will have been worth the wait.
“Overall, it went well. Had a couple of issues, and they were very minor,” Stevens said Tuesday in an interview with Sports Handle in downtown Chicago after Circa had its soft launch of mobile and retail operations last Friday. “We wanted to wait until effectively [Tuesday] before we have any events kicking in.”
Circa is the first New York.
Stevens has hitched Circa’s star in Illinois to Full House Resorts, a fellow Las Vegas-based outfit which is operating The Temporary at American Place in Waukegan. Circa’s space at The Temporary is its first retail sportsbook outside its signature Las Vegas location.
Circa will have its grand opening Wednesday, headlined by Pro Football Hall of Famer and former Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Ulracher. Should construction on American Place continue as expected, the permanent casino would open by early 2026.
“The one thing about our relationship with Full House is that we’re very complementary,” Stevens said. “They are very, very excited about [Wednesday], that we’re coming in with a group of 20 and Brian Urlacher. We’re doing what they wanted us to do — create a scene. That’s something right up our alley.”
‘Best bookmakers in the world’ 5d3c6q
What is @CircaSports value proposition for a recreational bettor who doesn’t bet full limits and has no problem getting down at other places? It is a great question and one I found myself answering a lot the past few days as we expanded into IL (1/16) 🧵
— Jeffrey Benson (@JeffreyBenson12) October 3, 2023
Stevens and his team have tried to make Circa stand out in two ways — the more notable of the two being its willingness to take high-limit bets from all comers. The other is not having a raft of promotional offers, which means Circa is leaning into its pricing as its other selling point.
“I think with us taking larger bets, that’s why you’re going to see Circa as generally the leader in the line,” Stevens said. “When Circa moves the line, there’s a lot of people watching because everybody’s really starting to get to understand we’re the one taking the [larger] bets.”
“We really do want to write bets, because we feel we have the best bookmakers in the world,” Circa Vice President of Operations Mike Palm added. “Once we open the line, they’re going to get maximum value out of all the action that they can take. We don’t limit people. We use the information from seasoned bettors … to get the number to where it should be earlier in the market than most other books will.”
This philosophy leads to Circa having a lower hold than traditional sportsbooks. In Illinois, the hold on mobile wagering in 2023 is 9.2% from more than $5.8 billion handle. FanDuel is pacing all mobile operators with a win rate of over 11.2%, but Palm is estimating Circa’s hold in Illinois will be between 2 and 3% — it is 4.4% all-time in Iowa — due to the volume of tickets he expects Circa to write.
“The sheer number of people is a big opportunity for us,” Palm explained. “There’s more people within an hour of Waukegan than the entire state of Iowa. We’re in Colorado, a very spread out state as well. The remote option [in Illinois] is obviously terrific.
“We can appeal to those people outside of the St. Louis area with Missouri still not online yet, as well as people from Wisconsin. We felt it was a fairly good market for us to enter our product into with the model of taking bigger bets. We thought we might be able to differentiate ourselves amongst the competitive group here.”
Making a retail space work 3o6i49
Though almost 97% of Illinois’ sports wagering handle is generated online, that other 3% matters to Circa and Full House. Stevens joked that Circa was fighting for extra space in The Temporary after seeing the initial layout, but he and Palm recognize the importance of working in tandem to be successful as Illinois continues to expand its gaming footprint.
“Even if the person is not necessarily sports-centric, it offers us an opportunity to provide a Las Vegas experience to some of [Full House’s] better customers as well,” Palm said. “There’s a synergy there with the expansion of gambling as a whole in Illinois and in particular in the city of Chicago. We hope to drive a lot of people to Waukegan for them and we hope to be the sports option for their loyal customers that they’ve built up as well.
“We’re going to have our first opportunity to have a retail book outside Nevada, which is a big advantage for us. And we hope to recreate in their permanent structure in American Place what we’ve done in Nevada at Circa.”
The establishment of a retail sportsbook outside Nevada instantly leads to talk about the potential for Circa expanding its Vegas-based Survivor and Pick ‘Em contests to Illinois. This year’s two contests will have more than $15 million in guaranteed payouts with no rake — the Survivor Pool alone is worth more than $9.2 million — but Stevens explained that a lot goes into those contests, which could make it challenging to replicate in the Midwest.
Though the football contests were designed to bring people to Circa (Nevada requires in-person registration) to see if they would like other forms of gaming on the property or the social scene in downtown Las Vegas, Stevens has never outright rejected the idea of having a second location for such a contest, recognizing the fluid nature of the industry.
“People ask, ‘Well, wouldn’t it be great if you could sign up for the contest of the state you’re licensed, like Iowa or Colorado, then potentially Illinois?’ And my answer’s always been: I don’t know. And the reason for that is because this is a rapidly evolving area.
“I’m not taking anything more than what’s at hand right now. I’m not overthinking it. Next year, regulations can change, you don’t know. So we have to be flexible. So my biggest thing to do is to be flexible.”
Early success and expansion plans 5z6n2s
Stevens said for Circa to be successful in 12 months’ time, it will need to build its low-hold model to scale. But Illinois is part of a holistic picture for the sportsbook, which will also launch in Kentucky in the coming months. Also on the horizon is expansion in Nevada.
“Our goal is to increase our rate considerably by the end of 2025,” he said. “The fact that we can expand in Kentucky and a bit more in Nevada, it actually helps us in Illinois because it allows us to develop a quicker time frame to get what I would consider a solid number, where we have a good baseline of action on both sides of the game, a good baseline of action in an entire futures pool, things like that.
“So I would say a year from now we ought to be at a point where our scale provides us even more value to our consumers.”
