The Indiana sports betting industry recently turned one year old, collecting more than $1.2 billion in wagers to date.
Retail wagering in Indiana kicked off in September 2019 and online/mobile sportsbooks started to hit cyberspace in October. There are now nine online/mobile books in the state.
Part of Indiana’s expansion into online gambling was the creation of the Internet Self-Restriction Program (ISRP), which kicked off in September 2019 and will remain separate from the Voluntary Exclusion Program that applies to the state’s brick-and-mortar casinos and racinos.
The ISRP is reserved for online/mobile sports gambling, so adding your name to the list won’t result in it appearing on the VEP list. That said, sports wagering operators in Indiana and elsewhere in the country may elect to remove ISRP participants from their properties.
According to an annual report from the Indiana Gaming Commission, 12 people signed up for the ISRP between its launch and the end of the fiscal year on June 30, 2020.
In 10 months, a dozen gamblers decided that sports betting via a smartphone or a computer wasn’t for them.
From the $1.2 billion in handle, sports bettors lost nearly $100 million to the books through August 2020.
ISRP Statistics
The IGC provided some basic information on the sports bettors or would-be sports bettors who self-restricted from online gambling. Their names have been kept confidential.
- 11 are male and one is female
- 11 are from Indiana and one is from Illinois
- Eight signed up for five years and four opted for one year
- All are 50 years of age or younger
VEP Statistics
The ISRP doesn’t necessarily include individuals who may have decided to self-exclude due — at least in part — to retail sports wagering. Eleven licensees in Indiana have retail sportsbooks.
As of Sept. 1, 5,927 people were on the VEP list, nearly 40% of whom are Indiana residents. Among neighboring states, 36% of the total hailed from Illinois, while Ohio and Kentucky were each home to about 10% of enrollees.
Unlike those who opt into the ISRP, under Indiana’s VEP gamblers can sign up for lifetime self-exclusion from the retail casinos.
Individuals can remove themselves from both the ISRP and the VEP after completing the amount of time they’ve requested. At the end of Fiscal Year 2019, 5,884 players were on the list, up from 5,773 the previous year.
So far, it doesn’t appear that retail sports gambling has had an impact on overall self-exclusion numbers in Indiana. It’s worth noting that the state’s casinos closed around the time of March Madness due to the COVID-19 pandemic, before reopening this summer.
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