Online sports betting off to fast start in Md. as more license applicants line up

State gaming officials are poised to give preliminary approval to three new applications for mobile sports betting licenses as well as two operators connected to two of those licenses. The Thursday votes set the stage for three more entrants into a new market that saw brisk business over the opening Thanksgiving weekend. While there are no official initial numbers, GeoComply, a company that tracks online gaming within states, told BetMaryland.com that 477,000 unique accounts placed 16.5 million online sports bets from Nov. 23-27 in Maryland. Nearly 4 million were placed on Thanksgiving Day, according to the gaming site. The number of transactions in Maryland was double that of neighboring Virginia, a state with 2 million more people.