My Old Kentucky Home
It's mobile launch day in Kentucky, with seven sportsbooks now live in one of the most anticipated, and potentially interesting (for reasons I'll outline below) launches in a long time.
The Bulletin Board
NEWS: Kentucky launch day. What to know and who to follow for updates.
NEWS: Floodgates remain closed. CFTC denies Kalshi’s request to offer election odds on a very specific market.
NEWS: Fanatics falls back to fourth place in app downloads during Week 3 of the NFL season.
BEYOND the HEADLINE: Sports betting app downloads are a (somewhat) useful measure of success, but what can these numbers really tell us?
VIEWS: What’s behind the uptick in betting on women’s sports?
AROUND the WATERCOOLER: The importance of payment processing and more on BetVision.
STRAY THOUGHTS: A Straight to the Point update!
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Kentucky Moblie Sports Betting Is Live
Seven mobile sports betting apps launched in Kentucky at 6 AM today.
The seven operators are Barstool (soon to be ESPN Bet), bet365, BetMGM, Caesars, DraftKings, Fanatics, and FanDuel.
Circa Sports has also been approved but will launch at a later date, and Prime Sports has announced its intention to launch in Kentucky.
One of the interesting threads to watch has to do with age. Barstool, BetMGM, Caesars, FanDuel, and Fanatics require bettors to be 21, while DraftKings and bet365 will follow the Kentucky law and allow betting at 18.
Another point of interest will be the smoothness of the launch. As I wrote on Monday:
“That said, there are a lot of crossed fingers in the Bluegrass State. The state’s expansion into sports betting has become a political issue, with Gov. Beshear highlighting sports betting as a key component of his reelection campaign.
“With that as the backdrop, the state has used a very accelerated launch timeline and is leaning heavily on a regulatory body that, as local press phrased it, “have 100 years of combined work experience in government and no experience in the gaming industry.””
For those interested in following along on launch day, I highly recommend:
Steve Bittenbender - a Kentucky-based reporter for Gambling.com Group
Jessica Welman - another Kentucky-based journo at SBC Americas
Robert Linehan - always has an ear to the ground and emails on auto-refresh.
The Sports Handle and Legal Sports Report teams.
CFTC Rebuffs Kalshi Election Market Request
Last month, I reported on a letter sent by US Senators urging the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to reject a proposal from Kalshi to offer a prediction market on which party would control Congress following the November elections.
The CFTC has sided with the Senators and rejected Kalshi’s request.
“Kalshi lets traders wager $25,000 on everything from monthly interest rate hikes to the timing of the next moon landing,” Bloomberg reports. “Its latest proposal in June could have allowed hedge funds and other Wall Street firms to bet as much as $100 million on which political party would control the House or Senate.”
In a statement, the CFTC called the request “contrary to the public interest,” noting:
“Betting or wagering on elections, as proposed by Kalshi, meets the definition of gaming. And in many states, betting or wagering on elections is prohibited by statute or common law.
“[…]
“It makes sense for the CFTC to have authority to combat fraud, manipulation, and false reporting in underlying commodity markets. But it is impractical for the CFTC to combat them in the underlying market here—a political contest. The implications of such authority are vast, and could extend in a multitude of directions beyond the election itself, political fundraising and polling, to name just two.”
As also reported in Straight to the Point, PredictIt recently scored a legal victory for its election markets after the CFTC revoked a no-action letter in 2022. With the court siding with PredictIt, the ball is back in the hands of the CFTC.
Fanatics App Downloads Drop After Jersey Promo
FanDuel and DraftKings remained the most downloaded sports betting apps during Week 3 of the NFL season, with both eclipsing 200,000 downloads. The big change was Fanatics-PointsBet, which dropped precipitously to #4, which Legal Sports Report’s Sam McQuillan noted is a 52% week-over-week decline that happened to coincide with the termination of its bet $50 and get a jersey up to $150 promo.
Per McQuillan, the download numbers for week 3 were:
FanDuel: 209k
DraftKings: 205k
BetMGM: 82k
Fanatics/PointsBet: 50k
Bet365: 43k
Caesars: 43k
Barstool: 18k
BetRivers: 12k
BallyBet: 7k
Beyond the Headline: Do These Numbers Matter?
Companies like to tout them when their download numbers are high, but these numbers don’t tell us much without adding a lot of context and some guesswork.
As Jessica Welman put it, “Citing app downloads as a metric of popularity feels like the equivalent of citing 10 years of a team's MNF performance in the rain as actionable betting info.”
And there is a lot of truth to that. In addition to special promos skewing numbers, downloads do not equal account registrations, never mind depositing customers.
You also have to consider existing market penetration and overall market access.
Fanatics is benefiting from its newness - BallyBet also has a new app that requires a fresh install. People have had, in some cases, years to download FanDuel, DraftKings, and other established brands. Basically, new brands will have juiced download numbers, which is something to keep an eye on when ESPN Bet goes live.
On the other hand, Fanatics is live in a mere four states. Yes, customers can download the app from anywhere in the US, but much of the marketing is targeted, and there is more reason to download an app in a locale where you can actually place bets on it.
So what can app download numbers tell us? By itself, not much, but when combined with other data, it helps paint a clearer picture. I’d also argue it provides some insight into a company’s overall brand awareness and the level of interest in the brand.
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Women’s Sports Grow in Popularity Among Bettors
In a recent press release, BetMGM noted that it is seeing a “27% YoY increase in active WNBA bettors” and an uptick in betting on women’s sports overall.
“BetMGM has seen an over 40% YoY increase in betting on women’s tennis and golf…
“The 2023 Women’s FIFA World Cup was the most-bet Women’s World Cup ever at BetMGM…
“The 2023 NCAA women’s basketball tournament earned strong betting interest and BetMGM reported a 30% increase in handle compared to last year’s tournament. Also, active bettors jumped 22%. For the first time, betting action on the women’s NCAA tournament was comparable to an NFL game.”
What’s unclear is if the uptick is due to more female bettors or more interest in women’s sports.
There is certainly some evidence of the former. Historically, men make up more than two-thirds of all sports bettors, but that appears to be changing.
“I’ve always been a sports-watching bystander,” Kara Endahl told Forbes in a May 2022 article. “My boyfriend is extremely into sports, so for me, when it became legal, I thought to myself, ‘I’m watching these games anyway, I might as well get more invested in them and throw a few dollars here, a few dollars there.’”
It appears the new, out-of-the-shadows legal nature of sports betting and the less intimidating learning curve mobile apps offer is piquing curiosity. There are other explanations, such as sharp bettors feeling these markets are softer, but I doubt it would drive the level of growth we are seeing.
Around the Watercooler
Social media conversations, rumors, and gossip.
It’s all about the payments, as Prime Sports is quickly learning.
There has been a lot of chatter about Genius Sport’s BetVision since it was officially announced on Tuesday.
One of the big questions is latency, which was recently a central component of an Interpol bust and a hot topic on Darren Rovell’s tweet.
Stray Thoughts
Keep an eye peeled. In the not-too-distant future, I will be launching the Straight to the Point Podcast. Working title: Talking Shop.