Julio Carrasco, general manager of a sports bar near the train station in Hoboken, New Jersey, has welcomed a new sort of clientele in the past few months.
Some are reps for sports-betting websites, like DraftKings or PointsBet, there to promote online wagering via events in the bar. The others are New York gamblers, typically single men, who come in by train just to bet.
“You notice the guys, everyone else is a regular, meeting friends, then you have one guy, specifically here to gamble,” said Carrasco, who runs the bar, called Texas Arizona.
New Jersey has seen a surge in sports bets since the state convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ban on such wagers last year. More than $4 billion in bets were placed there in 2019. But rather than going to …