Hard Rock Northern Indiana has been granted a temporary vendor license for retail and mobile sports wagering by the Indiana Gaming Commission, moving one step closer to joining a very competitive and largely well-established field of operators.
The IGC’s list of licensed vendors was released Monday, showing Hard Rock having been approved for a temporary license Jan. 12. The approval came eight months after the opening of the casino in the northwest part of the state, where it has quickly become one of the top revenue generators in Indiana on the casino gaming side.
Previous time spans from operators receiving retail vendor licenses to being able to launch have averaged between three and four weeks, which means wagering at Hard Rock’s Gary location could be possible before the Feb. 13 Super Bowl. If not, it seems at least likely by the start of the NCAA Tournament in mid-March.
The Hoosier State currently has 13 mobile operators accepting wagers, with DraftKings the leader in handle every month since launch in October 2019 and FanDuel tops in gross revenue for each of the last eight months. Four operators — WynnBET, Barstool Sportsbook, Betway, and Bally’s — commenced wagering in 2021, with Bally’s the most recent by entering the field last month.
Despite the relatively small size of Indiana, it has been a consistently strong performer in terms of sports betting handle and closed 2021 as one of five states to surpass $6 billion worth of wagers in the post-PASPA era. Operators accepted more than $3.8 billion worth of bets in 2021, with more than one-third of that total coming in the final three months of the year.
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