Dustin Gouker and the team at Legal Sports Report highlight some of the key US sports betting issues to look out for in the week ahead.
The NFL is here: Perhaps the biggest week for the nascent US sports betting market is here. While the launch of wagering in new states is a big deal, there is no bigger time for revenue and acquiring new customers than the first week of NFL season. Why? Americans bet on the NFL more than any other sport. Now, there’s the added dynamic of data company Sportradar telling US sportsbooks the price of official data from the NFL.
Off to the races in Indy: Indiana sports betting went live with the first few sportsbooks opening up on Sunday, making it the the 13th state. Several more will open up this week. But the big question looming over the state is when online betting will go live. This week does not seem possible, but there is no hard launch date. The most likely timeline appears to be sometime in October. In any event
Rhode Island mobile: Yet another state is poised to join the ranks of those with online betting this week. Rhode Island was one of the early wave of early adopters in legal sports gambling, but that came at only two casinos, with disappointing results. The problematic part is that bettors still must go to one of those two casinos to sign up for a mobile app, but at least RI will be online this football season. When it goes live, it will join Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Iowa with some form of legal online sports betting.
Fox Bet is here, and coming to PA: BetStars — the sports betting product from The Stars Group and Fox Sports — completed its rebrand this weekend, going live in New Jersey. The product is not radically different from BetStars — a new logo, different colors and promos are the biggest things immediately noticeable in the UX. The bigger news — FoxBet is supposed to go live in Pennsylvania this week. That is even more interesting than the NJ rebrand, because it’s joining a newer market with only a handful of entrants. We’ll quicklly find out how much value the FoxBet brand delivers, and how much money money Fox and Stars will pour into the new effort; Stars alone is earmarking $40 million for the roll out of Fox Bet and its US operations, which could include PokerStars going live in PA in the near future.