It may be the start of a new year but Jessica Welman, Editor of SBC Americas, and SBC’s Media Manager, Charlie Horner, were still dwelling on an action-packed 2024 for sports betting in North America on the latest episode of iGaming Daily.

Reflecting on the most significant events of the year, Jess noted there was a rising interest in sports betting from federal lawmakers.

She said: “I doubt [these bills] are going to go anywhere, but we had the GRIT Act regarding taking the federal excise tax on handle and using it for problem gambling and we had the Safe Bet Act, which was a very overarching federal framework that would limit a whole lot related to sports betting and really change the industry.

“Then we had increasing calls from various groups, the NCAA and the AGA, saying that if you want to get involved federally, please do, especially with cracking down on offshore operators and, of course, now they’re pushing maybe to crack down on sweepstakes operators too.”

Staying on the theme of offshore operators, Jess also spoke about the concerted push from US states to remove the offshore sports betting operator Bovada from their jurisdictions.

“Michigan really led the way on this one,” explained Jess. “They were effectively delivering cease and desist [letters] and created a model for people to replicate. They put these letters out, made announcements about it and then other regulators followed suit.”

Last month, Arizona became the 16th and latest state to send Bovada a cease and desist letter asking the operator to leave the state. Tennessee recently fined the group $50,000 after sending several cease and desist letters and failing to receive a response.

Elsewhere, one of the biggest stories for Charlie throughout 2024 was the exodus of European operators, such as Kindred’s Unibet brand, from the US as they struggled to wrestle market share from the “duopoly of FanDuel and DraftKings”.

“I think a lot of these European operators just thought, we know how to run a sportsbook, we’re going to come in here, it’ll be fine,” added Jess. 

“I think, certainly as we look to Brazil now that Brazil is launching, they learned from the mistakes they made here that you’ve got to be somewhat local in what you’re doing. I think everybody just underestimated how much competitors are willing to spend in the customer acquisition battle, which led to a lot of market exits.”