ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — A record 50.4 million American adults plan to bet on this year's Super Bowl, wagering a total of $16 billion, the gambling industry's national trade group predicted Tuesday.

The American Gaming Association forecasts that 1 in 5 American adults will place a bet on Sunday's NFL championship game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs.

The estimate includes legal bets, and those placed with illegal bookies or casually among friends or relatives.

The total amount expected to be wagered this year is more than double the amount from last year as the legal U.S. sports betting market continues to grow.

There are three additional states offering legal sports betting this year — Kansas, Ohio and Massachusetts — compared with a year earlier, for a total of 33 states plus Washington, D.C. Maryland also added mobile sports betting in the past year, but it had in-person wagering for last year's Super Bowl.

More than half of all American adults live in a market where sports betting is legal.

“Every year, the Super Bowl serves to highlight the benefits of legal sports betting: Bettors are transitioning to the protections of the regulated market, leagues and sports media are seeing increased engagement, and legal operators are driving needed tax revenue to states across the country,” said Bill Miller, the association's president and CEO.

Hard data is backing up predictions of a record-setting betting market for this year's game. GeoComply, which handles nearly all the online betting traffic for the U.S. sports betting market to verify a customer is in a particular location where such bets are legal, says it has recorded over 550 million geolocation checks during the NFL playoffs from Jan. 14 to 29.

That's up 50% from the same period last year, and the group is predicting record-setting volume for this year's Super Bowl.

Eilers & Krejcik Gaming Research, an independent analytics firm in California, looked solely at legal bets. It predicted a total of just over $1 billion this year, led by Nevada ($155 million); New York ($111 million); Pennsylvania ($91 million); Ohio ($85 million) and New Jersey ($84 million.) Their research was not involved in the AGA predictions.

The company estimated 10 to 15% of that total would be wagered live after the game begins, and that 15 to 20% would come in the form of same-game parlays, or a combination of bets involving the same game, such as betting on the winner, the total points scored and how many passing yards Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts will accumulate.

The AGA survey found bettors evenly split, with 44% backing the Chiefs and an identical percentage betting on the Eagles.

The Eagles were 1.5-point favorites as of Monday night on FanDuel, the official odds provider to The Associated Press.

There is a vast array of bets offered on the big game, from the most basic predictions of which team will win and by how many points, to wagering on the total amount of points scored in the game.

Also popular are so-called proposition or prop bets on individual player performances, like whether Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes will throw two or fewer touchdown passes or how many rushing yards Eagles running back Miles Sanders will accumulate.

For the Super Bowl, these bets encompass outcomes as unusual as whether the opening coin toss will come up heads or tails; whether the final score of the game has ever happened before as the score of a past Super Bowl, and even what color of Gatorade will be dumped on the winning coach.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (LEX 18) — Those in favor of legalizing sports betting in Kentucky think 2023 is the year the legislature can make it happen.

On Wednesday, the House Licensing, Occupations, and Administrative Regulations Committee unanimously voted yes on House Bill 551, the sports betting bill. The committee vote represented the bill's first sign of progress in the current legislative session.

Republican Rep. Michael Meredith, the bill’s lead sponsor, told the committee the goal of the bill is to take an industry "that exists in darkness and in the shadows" and legitimize it, legalize it, and regulate it.

He explained that the bill seeks to legalize something that's already happening in the Commonwealth. He says data shows that Kentuckians currently bet around $1 billion, annually, on sports in an "illegal, unregulated market."

"We know there's a ton of this activity already going on in the state and there's a ton of residents crossing the border to place their bets," said Meredith. "We just need to bring this home and regulate it properly."

But David Walls, executive director of The Family Foundation, doesn't believe that's a good enough reason to pass HB 551.

"Just because other states are making bad policy decisions and preying on their own citizens is not a good reason for Kentucky to follow suit," said Walls.

Walls spoke out against the bill during the committee hearing, warning that state-sanctioned sports betting would create more social problems for Kentucky's families.

“This type of predatory gambling is designed to prey on human weakness, with the government colluding with gambling interests to exploit our fellow Kentuckians,” Walls said.

House Bill 551 would allow Kentucky’s horse racing tracks to be licensed as sports betting facilities for a $500,000 upfront fee and an annual renewal fee of $50,000. Participating tracks could contract with up to three service providers to provide sports wagering services at the track itself, or through online sites and mobile applications. Service providers would have to pay $50,000 for an initial license, with a $10,000 annual renewal fee.

Under the bill, the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission would regulate sports wagering operations. Revenue generated from taxing such wagering would cover those regulatory costs. The leftover revenue would flow into the state's public pension system. But Meredith believes they have the votes in the House and are close to getting them in the Senate.

The bill faces a higher procedural hurdle to overcome this year. It needs a three-fifths vote in each chamber to pass since it’s a revenue-producing bill in an odd-numbered year.

"I think we're really, really close," he said. "I think we're in a couple of votes of being where we need to be and we're going to continue to work those as we get the bill off the House floor."

Meredith believes HB 551 could be voted on in the House early next week.