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.
Online betting looms for Indiana…: State No. 7 with statewide mobile betting is on tap. Indiana regulators gave the green light to Rush Street Interactive to launch a betting app on Thursday. RSI is the company behind SugarHouse and BetRivers Sportsbooks in Pennsylvania; it also has online sports betting in New Jersey. Partnered with French Lick Casino in the state, we’ll get our first glimpse into the appetite for mobile betting in another Midwest state after Iowa went live earlier this month. Indiana has an advantage, however: You can sign up for an account anywhere in the state instead of heading to the closest casino.
…And Oregon gets a sports betting app too: Soon after state No. 7 gets mobile betting, Oregon should become No.8 where you can wager anywhere in the state.
The Oregon Lottery will launch its Scoreboard app in the very near future, with Oct. 7 the new target date. Oregon is rolling out a monopoly model that is similar to Rhode Island and Delaware, using SBTech to power the lottery’s offering. Sports betting went live in the state with a single sportsbook at a tribal casino this summer.
Will there ever be any issues with Fox and its betting content?: Wide-ranging interview with Fox Bet CEO Robin Chhabra here; he heads up the joint venture between Fox Sports and Stars Group for a US sports betting app. (So far the app is live in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.) One of the interesting points for Fox Bet is how aggressively the platform uses its personalities to push certain types of bets and to give betting advice. It’s something that’s been done with Sky Bet in the UK to success, but it’s the first instance of it in the US. So far, some of the top faces have done well, including Colin Cowherd and Clay Travis. But what happens if either hits on a losing streak of bets that Fox pushes it on its user base? There’s also the interest in gcarrot of a sports betting partnership sitting out there for someone to grab with the NFL.
DraftKings is now the “official daily fantasy sports partner” of the league. Does that pave the way for DK to get a sports betting deal, as well, or could a motivated company like Fox get something done with a league that has always been standoffish with betting.
