Prop odds are out for this weekend’s eagerly anticipated GE North Pole Bowl. First TD scorer: Dasher 2-1, Dancer 50-1, Prancer 20-1, Vixen 15-1, Comet 8-1, Cupid (Reserve: COVID-19), Donner 34-1, Blitzen (Out-undisclosed), Rudolph 2-5, Hermey 1,250-1. I’m watching the weather.
Fun fact: GE was the sponsor of the debut of the Rankin & Bass classic "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," with commercials that featured Santa’s elves (starting here at the 1:35 mark). Now there’s a gem to share with friends and family this holiday season.
Broad Ohio sports coalition stuck together to get betting across finish line
The long-awaited passage of legislation in Ohio earlier this month stands as a reminder of the influence teams can have in a state, and particularly one such as this, where seven major pro teams are spread across three distinct metro areas: Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus.
The bill that Gov. Mike DeWine soon will sign includes license eligibility for all those teams, as well as a Muirfield Village, which hosts a PGA Tour event, and the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, which hosts the NASCAR Truck Series, among other racing series. Each can open a retail sportsbook at its facility and also gets access to one of 25 statewide online licenses, with the rest going to the state’s commercial casino and parimutuel operators.
This is well beyond what was envisioned for the teams when lawmakers began introducing bills in Ohio in 2019. Those original constructs included licenses for commercial casinos, lottery outlets, bars and restaurants, but left stadiums and arenas out entirely. Until January, the only sports interests that had lobbied Ohio lawmakers on the matter were the NBA, MLB and PGA Tour, who had aligned in a coalition with DraftKings and FanDuel, and one Ohio team, the Reds. All were in from the time the first bills were filed. Several were proposed, but all went by the wayside.
Then, heading into the 2021 session, the sports coalition broadened. The NFL and NASCAR joined. More importantly, so did the Indians, Browns, Bengals, Crew, Pro Football Hall of Fame and FC Cincinnati. All of them lobbied. Those that didn’t have their lobbyists work legislators formally still participated in weekly strategy calls. “On coalition calls, it could be almost 30 people,” said sports betting consultant Sara Slane, who advised the Reds and Blue Jackets. “It was an all hands on deck effort among the teams and their lobbyists. I’m impressed by how well they all worked together.
“I’ve worked with a ton of operators, a ton of coalitions and a ton of teams. In this process, they did not relent. And they did not break with each other. The coalition was incredibly well managed and maintained. And it involved everyone. It was everyone being on the same page. We spoke every single week, twice a week. We held firm in our position that the teams should receive a license and in the end we were successful.”
Team venues to be attractive locales for betting operators in Ohio
Ohio won’t be like Arizona, where half the online licenses created were reserved for sports entities and the rest went to the native tribes, which dominate gaming in the state. In that structure, sports facility ties became the preferred point of online entry for all the leading operators. DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Caesars, PointsBet and Barstool already have market access in Ohio, either by virtue of casinos they own there or through deals they began cutting before legislation was even introduced.
But there will be others who want a crack at the sports-minded state, which with 8.6 million over-21 adults figures to be the fourth most populous legalized state when it starts taking bets, likely after March Madness, but before next NFL season. And the leading operators are certain to want to pair on retail opportunities with the teams, who regularly host a high concentration of the most likely sports bettors.
“We’ve got to play it out and see what ends up happening,” Slane said. “But I do think that the landscape of what the teams are asking for and their power in the process and discussion has shifted tremendously.”
Chicago city council gives OK to stadium/arena sportsbooks
The stadium and arena sportsbooks that were incorporated into Illinois sports betting law finally have been blessed by the Chicago City Council, which on Wednesday relaxed its free-standing prohibition of in-person sports betting.
The council cleared the way for teams to strike deals to open sportsbooks within five blocks of Wrigley Field, Guaranteed Rate Field, United Center, Soldier Field and Wintrust Arena.
On Monday, a city council committee heard from three owners: the Cubs' Tom Ricketts, White Sox's Jerry Reinsdorf and Blackhawks' Rocky Wirtz. Reinsdorf stirred things up when he questioned why Rivers Casino Chairman Neil Bluhm, who now opposes stadium and arena sportsbooks, once sought to operate them at Guaranteed Rate Field and United Center. Here’s that, and more of what the team owners had to say.
What mattered most for sports betting in 2021?
As we wrap up the year, it’s time to review and preview. Three things that mattered most in 2021:
The map:
The recent passage of legislation in Ohio and the lifting of prohibitions in Chicago served as reminders of what has been the dominant storyline of U.S. sports betting in 2021: The pace of legalization and the degree to which models have varied from state to state.
Six states began taking online sports bets in 2021: Michigan, Virginia, Arizona, Connecticut, Montana and Wyoming. Louisiana and Maryland, which approved sports betting by referendum in 2020, should open in the first half of 2022, as should New York, which legalized in April and will become the nation’s most populous legalized state.
For those scoring at home, the rest of the legal online markets: Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, D.C., Colorado, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Oregon and Tennessee.
At the start of the year, about 51 million U.S. adults over age 21 could bet online legally -- which is about 21% of all adults. As we enter 2022, that number is 74 million, or 31%. That number will reach 44% when New York, Maryland, Louisiana and Ohio open next year. Florida was derailed by a court order and shut down earlier this month.
The NFL reverses field:
The most bet-on U.S. league went from zero to warp speed in 2021, signing three leaguewide sponsors in the sportsbook category in a package of deals that could be worth $1 billion to the league across five years. The opening of the category also brought sportsbook advertising to NFL broadcasts, with the league allowing six spots per game.
The NFL was the first of the major pro leagues to move its official data rights exclusively to one distributor, locking up with Genius Sports in a deal that included equity in the company. Both Genius and leading distributor Sportradar went public this year. That set the stage for them to offer equity stakes in exchange for exclusivity. The NBA and NHL both signed with Sportradar, with the NBA securing an eight-year deal likely to be worth $1 billion.
Caesars:
The completion of the acquisition of U.K.-based operator William Hill brought the well-known casino chain into the sports betting fray in a big way, with a re-branded app and a national ad campaign to back it. Caesars was the first U.S. sportsbook to make a national, prime-time ad buy, airing its now familiar campaign during the Olympics. It’s been a fixture In both national and RSN programming ever since.
Looking ahead to the top 2022 storylines
Here are three things to watch in 2022.
The map, again:
All eyes will be on New York in the coming months. But there are several more dominos likely to fall in the coming year, including North Carolina (7.7 million adults over age 21) and Massachusetts (5.2 million). Georgia and Missouri are two more to watch -- and November could bring ballot initiatives in California and Florida.
Market share:
Customer acquisition has been staggeringly expensive, as a handful of leading operators spend heavily in state after state, hoping to lock up the early adopters who likely will provide the highest lifetime values. In state after state, FanDuel and DraftKings remain the leaders, though BetMGM has gained ground and is in the conversation in more recently launched states. Can Caesars spend its way into the race? Based on what its spending on advertising and promotion, it appears to be ready to try.
In-play betting
Since its inception in the U.S., we’ve heard about how in-play wagers -- those placed after the start of the game -- have become the dominant bets in Europe, and that the same would happen in the U.S. It has evolved more slowly than many anticipated. One U.S. in-play evangelist believes that’s largely a function of the way in-play is defined, and the vast differences between the cadence of sports that are most popular in the U.S. (football, basketball and baseball) and the U.K. (soccer).
“People often conflate what in-play means,” said Chris Bevilacqua, CEO and co-founder of Simplebet, a software developer that allows sportsbooks to offer odds on difficult to predict events within a game, such as how a drive will end in football or how many pitches an at bat will last. “In-play in soccer is really the traditional (bet types); a handful of them that go on for two hours and the (odds) move.”
Bevilacqua’s company sees the future of U.S. in play as a more engaging experience known as micro-betting, where bettors wager on subsets of a game that resolve more quickly -- a drive or possession in basketball or an at bat in baseball, for example. DraftKings offers Simplebet’s product under a tab it calls “Flashbet." In five months, it has grown to represent more than 15% of the site’s in-play betting handle, Bevilacqua said.
“It’s hard to ignore 15 or 20% of in-play moving into these micro markets,” Bevilacqua said. “This is going to be the predominate way people bet on sports in the U.S.: In-play and microbets. It’s a more entertaining and engaging experience. It’s more of a mass market and casual fan.”
Football season a boon again for U.S. sportsbook handles
Sports betting continued to accelerate across the country in the second full month of the football season, with record-setting handle in 18 of 20 states and D.C. in October. Only West Virginia and Montana failed to shatter records, many of which were set in September. October was up 36% vs. September and more than doubled the combined handle of October 2020. In those states that already taking bets in October 2020, handle was up 89%, year over year.
| U.S. sportsbook handle through October |
| STATE |
OCTOBER |
VS.
SEPT. 2021 |
VS.
OCT. 2020 |
2021
THRU OCT. |
| New Jersey |
$1,303,198,342 |
29% |
62% |
$8,448,152,213 |
| Nevada |
$1,100,501,139 |
40% |
67% |
$6,031,136,322 |
| Illinois |
$844,735,681 |
43% |
96% |
$5,445,145,838 |
| Pennsylvania |
$776,277,954 |
34% |
48% |
$5,040,145,826 |
| Michigan |
$497,565,424 |
29% |
n/a |
$2,950,754,381 |
| Colorado |
$491,453,341 |
20% |
133% |
$2,910,637,294 |
| Indiana |
$461,131,242 |
30% |
100% |
$2,902,711,633 |
| Virginia |
$427,320,306 |
45% |
n/a |
$2,392,572,789 |
| Tennessee |
$375,300,000 |
46% |
n/a |
$2,022,900,000 |
| Iowa |
$280,899,986 |
33% |
243% |
$1,487,683,162 |
| New Hampshire |
$98,191,306 |
44% |
109% |
$534,285,603 |
| Mississippi |
$83,527,014 |
52% |
36% |
$468,664,116 |
| West Virginia |
$60,478,691 |
32% |
6% |
$377,798,556 |
| Rhode Island |
$60,158,844 |
46% |
73% |
$346,774,661 |
| Connecticut |
$54,452,548 |
n/a |
n/a |
$54,452,548 |
| Oregon |
$37,639,041 |
50% |
28% |
$265,182,543 |
| D.C. |
$26,332,226 |
27% |
42% |
$162,654,465 |
| Delaware |
$22,238,321 |
62% |
30% |
$93,627,775 |
| Wyoming |
$10,847,657 |
74% |
n/a |
$17,090,126 |
| Arkansas |
$9,506,183 |
36% |
45% |
$49,587,732 |
| Montana |
$3,700,975 |
28% |
n/a |
$37,408,810 |
| TOTAL |
$7,025,456,221 |
36% |
119% |
$42,039,366,391 |
NOTES: Connecticut sportsbooks began taking bets on Oct. 19. February was the first full month in Michigan and Virginia. Michigan, Virginia, Tennessee, Connecticut, Wyoming and Montana had not yet opened online in October 2020.
Speed reads
- SBJ this week unveiled our list of the Most Influential People in Sports Business in 2021. Among those listed as industry drivers this year were Caesars Digital co-Presidents Chris Holdren and Eric Hession, FanDuel CEO Amy Howe, Genius Sports CEO Mark Locke, Sportradar CEO Carsten Koerl and DraftKings CEO Jason Robins.
- Gaming Society has signed its first distribution agreement with TV streaming platform fuboTV to air its sports betting and fantasy football vodcast featuring former NFLers Michael Vick and Dave Anderson starting today on Fubo Sports Network, notes my colleague Liz Mullen.
- The PGA Tour and BetMGM signed a three-year extension through 2024 to their marketing and content relationship designating BetMGM as an official betting operator of the Tour.
- SBJ's John Ourand notes all 43 USFL games will be played in Birmingham this upcoming season, which will cut down on production expenses and enable Fox and NBC to test different production and programming techniques during games. Could some of those have sportsbook ties? NBC Sports Chair Pete Bevacqua: “What can we do as sports betting continues to develop? How can we experiment with the speed of the game? All of these things that we can really roll the dice a little bit and see how aggressive we can be.”
