The National Football League (NFL) season has got underway, providing yet another boost to the burgeoning sports betting sector in the US.
Observing that the NFL season coincides with the highest customer acquisition rates and the largest handle for sports betting operators, Matt Brown of the Legal Sports Report discussed the state of the US wagering industry as the 2021 campaign begins.
“We’re at a point where we’re about to go into a season and the NLF has seven sportsbook partners,” Brown’s co-host, Adam Candee, noted.
“The NFL is producing its own gambling content. We’re talking about potentially a billion dollar ad spend on television this year, advertising legal sportsbooks across the country, and nearly half of US states that have some kind of legal sports betting industry, with a few more set to launch. That is not including real industries in New York, California, Florida and Texas. We’re also in a prime M&A phase right now as well.
“Three and a half years in, this is already a multi-billion dollar industry,” he continued.
“We’ve already seen major shifts in where the power centres are. Obviously Nevada still has its claim to fame, with Las Vegas being the OG of sports betting, but we’ve seen markets like New Jersey, Illinois and Pennsylvania stake their claim to say that you can have both a big market in Nevada and these power centres.
“That’s not even to mention that we lost sports for the better part of six months during a global pandemic.”
Candee further outlined his view that the progress of the US sports betting market has been ‘remarkable’, whilst predicting that the ‘possibilities still seem endless’ with regards to the industry’s future.
However, the industry is still encountering some hurdles in certain states, with lawsuits in Arizona recently threatening to delay the launch of the regulated market in the state ahead of the planned opening day of 11 September.
Luckily for major operators in the state – including DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Caesars Entertainment and WynnBet – the market launched as planned.
Dustin Gauker remarked: “Other than the shennagains with lawsuits, this is what we saw in Michigan, which was really successful in ramping up really quickly.
He added: It’s going to be big, all the operators are marketing at the same time, in advance of NFL season. Some of them have league and team partners as well to drive even more engagement and signups.
“It’s not quite the perfect storm, but Arizona is surpass other launches by a longshot, just between population and a lot of operators going live at the same time.”
Source – Legal Sports Report YouTube Channel
