FanDuel has penned a deal with the PGA Tour which gives the operator market access to the online sports betting market in North Carolina when it opens next year.
As first reported by Sports Business Journal’s Bill King, FanDuel has leaned on its long-term partner to be its written designated agreement partner to make it eligible for a license in the Tar Heel State.
Operators must reach a WDA with a sports team or league before being able to apply for a license and previous deals include bet365 partnering with the Charlotte Hornets and Penn Entertainment linking with Quail Hollow Club.
“We have a great relationship with the Tour and we have every intention of continuing that,” said Christian Genetski, President of FanDuel. “Building off of an existing partner made it a pretty easy conversation to get to the parameters of a deal that we were very comfortable with.”
SBJ reports that there is no sponsorship angle to the deal, which is unlike the two other aforementioned deals in which bet365 and ESPN BET will benefit from marketing space and sponsorship exposure to their partners’ audiences.
Instead, the PGA Tour has simply implemented a commercial WDA deal that allows FanDuel to apply to enter the ninth-largest US state.
“We are very familiar with FanDuel. We are probably the president of their fan club,” said Scott Warfield, VP/Gaming for the PGA Tour. “And we intend to be in business with them as long as we’re in sports betting. That made something that’s long-term like this make a ton of sense.”
The application process for sports betting in North Carolina is currently open and will be until Dec. 27.
The market could theoretically open on Jan 8, 2024, however, the North Carolina Lottery Commission’s sports betting committee has already ruled this out owing to the volume of work needing to be done.
The Lottery’s Chair Ripley Rand stated: “We know that the betting public is very interested in knowing the date that the first batch can be made in North Carolina. There are a number of factors in determining what that date will be – the number of applications that we received, the dates that the applications are completed, the dates that the supporting information is submitted – 1000s of pages of information that we’re going to have to review.
“We’re going to have to complete our rulemaking so that the applicants know what the rules are going to be once the licenses are approved, we’re going to need to complete background checks on all the applicants to make sure that they comply with North Carolina law and with all of our rules, and the operators will have to submit their internal controls.”
