Place Your Bets: 2 Downtown Phoenix Venues for Sports Gambling are Preparing to Open Article originally posted on AZ Central on August 11, 2021 FanDuel’s downtown Phoenix sportsbook at Footprint Center, home of the Phoenix Suns and Mercury, will be ready for gamblers on Sept. 9, according to the company that is scrambling to finish construction and licensing by the kick off date. Sports betting was legalized in Arizona earlier this year and the Department of Gaming just finished accepting applications from pro sports teams and Native American tribes that plan to offer sportsbooks. The department said it received 10 applications from professional sports teams/venues and 15 applications from tribes. Each tribe can have a physical sportsbook but only 10 licenses are available for mobile betting for tribes. The state is planning to allow the first bets to be placed on Sept. 9, coinciding with the first game of the NFL season, and FanDuel Group, an international sports-betting company based in New York, says it will be ready. A nearby sportsbook at Chase Field will take bets that day also, but only through kiosks. The full venue will open for gamblers to sit back and watch games in early 2022. It’s unclear how many sportsbooks will operate on the first day bets are allowed. Gamblers should have a host of mobile options for placing bets, with several gambling operators planning to launch digital apps for betting that Arizonans can legally access that day. But not every professional sports team and tribe will have their physical sportsbooks open Sept. 9 for gamblers to walk in and place a bet. FanDuel plans to get a jump on the market. “We are actually 70% to 80% completed,” said Jose Torres, FanDuel’s director of design and construction said of the downtown Phoenix sportsbook. The 7,435-square-foot FanDuel Sportsbook is the first for the company inside a sports arena. It will be open most days of the year regardless of whether there are games at the arena, with an outdoor patio fronting Jefferson Street and an indoor seating area as well. Plans are for 26 self-service betting terminals and five windows, plus one more in a “MVP room.” Of course, TV screens will plaster the venue, including a 42-foot LED video wall and 31 65-inch screens, plus a smaller video wall in the MVP room. FanDuel’s first retail sportsbook was at Meadowlands Racetrack in New Jersey, which opened in summer of 2018 as a 5,310-square-foot facility adjacent to MetLife Stadium near New York City. The company is learning to make the venues more customer friendly, he said.