On the latest episode of iGaming Daily, Jessica Welman, Editor of SBC Americas, was joined by SBC’s Media Manager, Charlie Horner, to discuss the poor performance of US sportsbooks due to a slew of favourable outcomes for bettors.
Jess explained that reports suggest operators returned a hold of 7% in October, down 33% from the norm. Numerous executives also cited the results in the operators’ Q3 earnings calls.
On what happened, she said: “Some operators were impacted a little more than others because in football, what people do is they’ll parlay a bunch of things together.
“The reason we have such a high double-digit hold usually is because parlays don’t pan out. But in the case of the past month, in particular week six of the NFL season, favourites have been coming in and everyone did the job they were supposed to do.”
Despite being stung by parlays in October, Jess added that it is unlikely that sportsbooks will move away from pushing these products due to their upside.
“I think it’s just an anomaly you forget about and move on,” explained Jess.
“Offering multi-leg parlays that most people are going to lose is a winning strategy. If we put all of the revenue on a big map, it’s a little blip in the radar. The NFL is weird and that’s what makes it amazing and such a good product is that it’s a game where anything can happen. And then once in a while, you have a boring week where actually nothing happens.”
After a short break, the duo then moved on to discuss an ongoing player likeness dispute between the MLB players union and several sportsbooks.
MLB Players Inc. filed a lawsuit in the Eastern Pennsylvania District Court against DraftKings and bet365 and did the same for FanDuel and Underdog in the New York Supreme Court.
In both suits, the union took issue with the use of individual player images both within the operators’ apps and external marketing and social media posts featuring individual player props.
Following the filings, FanDuel has come to an agreement with the players union whereas DraftKings has filed a motion to dismiss the case, claiming that its use of the images falls within fair use.
On DraftKings’ argument, Jess said: “I think the thing that they’re saying about social media makes a lot more sense to me in terms of the fair use cases that I’ve seen.
“[Pittsburh Pirates pitcher] Paul Skenes, as an example, went on a crazy run at the beginning of his rookie season and they created social media content around it, that’s newsworthy in the sense of someone going on a run like that and you would use photos around it. I think I’ve seen other operators fall into the parameters of that fair use.
“Apparently there’s a case involving fantasy with FanDuel and DraftKings previously with some college athletes who filed a similar suit. I’ll be curious to see where it goes, it does seem legally fantasy sites have been on the winning side of this, but I’m very interested to see the outcome of the rest of these suits and where this one goes.”
