At the end of last month, gambling technology provider SBTech was the target of a cyberattack, most likely perpetrated by some wanna-be hacker, or hackers, bored at home while on lockdown because of the coronavirus. The attack forced the company to take its data center offline, which effected a number of operators, including NetBet, ComeOn, BetAmerica and more. With digital order apparently restored, 
BetAmerica is now reportedly back online, ready to welcome whatever activity it can get while COVID-19 continues to keep the sports world in a holding pattern.
BetAmerica, which is owned by Churchill Downs Inc., reported on Friday that it was now back in business, three weeks after the embarrassing attack. What took the company so long to get back up isn’t quite clear, and other operators, such as the Oregon Lottery and its Scoreboard sports gambling product, returned after just a couple of days. BetAmerica added in communication it sent to its customers, “SBTech and the security firms engaged in responding to this attack have advised us that there has been no indication that BetAmerica customer data was accessed or extracted.”
The good news is that the outage didn’t impact the company’s bottom line a great deal. Since the coronavirus already had sports on lockdown, there wasn’t much action to be missed. The bad news is that the outage won’t help BetAmerica’s recovery efforts. It has operations in several states, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana and others, and has been struggling to increase its position. In Indiana, it is ranked last and, since the new year rolled around, it has not provided any sports gambling tax revenue to the state. In Pennsylvania, the most recent fiscal year performance of its sportsbook puts BetAmerica in 10th place out of 12 operators.
Every day is one day closer to the end of the coronavirus saga, even if a date for when things can return to normal still isn’t known. In the meantime, all major sports continue to hunker down in their virtual locker rooms, waiting to receive the call to return to the field. Each league is coming up with its own revival plan and it’s possible (but doubtful) that the U.S. could see some sort of major sports as early as next month. The sooner, the better for the sportsbooks, as they continue to miss out on essentially 100% of what drives their operations. After having shelled out millions of dollars to cover sports gambling licenses in different states, the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to take a direct hit to the jugular.
