With the beginning of August just a few days away, bookmakers are working as feverishly as ever to get things operating at a pristine level. In fact, there are more legal operable bookmakers in the United States than ever before.
Ten states now have legal sports betting, while another five are working on launching regulated industries before the end of 2019.
DraftKings Partnerships
DraftKings became an authorized gaming operator for Major League Baseball last week, which allows them to use official league data and logos. The two companies have a relationship that dates back to 2013 when MLB became the league to invest in what was really only a daily fantasy sports company at the time.
Last week, the list of DraftKings’ partnerships grew as they struck a deal with the PGA Tour, which has been trying to monetize its ShotLink product for use in the gaming space.
FanDuel Sportsbooks
FanDuel, on the other hand, has kept busy by opening a sportsbook in upstate New York and finally digging their footprint in the mobile betting game in Pennsylvania. They were approved for a soft launch last week, so after the website and mobile app completed their testing mid-week, the platform is now officially open for business full time.
In addition to the upstate location in New York and the online platform in New Jersey (and now Pennsylvania), FanDuel already has a physical sportsbook at the Meadowlands Racetrack in East Rutherford, NJ. The Garden State reported in June that it had a revenue of $4.4 million from sports betting.
In Pennsylvania, there are now four online sportsbooks – SugarHouse, BetRivers, and Parx – with FanDuel the only one with a functional iOS app at the time. Those other operators have seen substantial losses in opportunities without having that iOS platform available. Apple decided that it wouldn’t have betting apps as a part of its platform unless the operators made specific changes to the guidelines, and FanDuel was the only one to adhere to those.
Anticipated Gains
While it’s still too early to tell, it appears like FanDuel will be swimming in the money once the end-of-year numbers come in. They are absolutely crushing it in the state of New Jersey, in terms of revenue and customer feedback and have been quite anxious to make their mark in The Keystone State.
Since sports betting launched in November for the state of Pennsylvania, they’ve taken in $21.7 million in sports betting, compared to $23.6 million from daily fantasy sports. With the mobile betting aspect now up and running, one can only expect those sports betting numbers to rise.
“We’re leveraging our expertise in creating world-class fantasy and sports betting experiences to build the best online sports betting platform in the state of Pennsylvania.” said Mike Raffensperger, the chief marketing officer of FanDuel Group.
In New Jersey, both DraftKings and FanDuel were major contributors to a revenue of over $3 billion for the state in its first year of existence in the sports betting field. Mobile betting was the catalyst for this bout of financial explosion, as 80 percent of the wagers accepted came via that method.
