Welcome Back

The Seminole Tribe has relaunched its Hard Rock Bet mobile sports betting app in Florida... on a limited scale.

Nov 08, 2023

NEWS: Hard Rock Bet mobile sports betting app returns to Florida in “early access period.”
NEWS: The Pro League Network (PLN) has a growing library of niche sports you can bet on.
BEYOND the HEADLINE: What is the secret sauce that allows a niche sport to take off?
VIEWS: The Massachusetts Gaming Commission has questions about ESPN Bet. Commissioners grill Penn on various topics.
AROUND the WATERCOOLER: Barriers to entry, and a game of “Would You Rather” for the gambling industry.
STRAY THOUGHTS: Overstepping mandates.

SPONSOR’S MESSAGE - Underdog: the most innovative company in sports gaming.

At Underdog we use our own tech stack to create the industry’s most popular games, designing products specifically for the American sports fan.

Join us as we build the future of sports gaming.

Visit: https://underdogfantasy.com/careers

(Limited?) Mobile Betting Returns to Florida

The Hard Rock Bet social media team posted another Undertaker gif on Tuesday morning, which means there must be an update on mobile sports betting in Florida.

And what an update it was.

According to Legal Sports Report’s Mike Mazzeo, a statement from the tribe reads: “The Seminole Tribe is offering limited access to existing Florida customers to test its Hard Rock Bet platform.”

Per ESPN’s David Purdum, this is an “early access period.”

That access includes existing Hard Rock Bet customers (anyone with a previously registered account), as well as Hard Rock Unity rewards members.

How big of a deal is this? According to Eilers & Krejcik Gaming’s Chris Krafcik, Hard Rock Bet’s Florida Monopoly will garner a 4.5% national share of the online sports betting market.

When will the app be available statewide? My best guess is whenever the next Undertaker gif is posted - As good as the Undertaker gifs are, I would have gone with Welcome Back Kotter and John Sebastian’s Welcome Back.

Nothing Niche About It

You may not be familiar with Pro League Network (PLN), but unless you’ve avoided the internet for the past few years, you will surely recognize some of its products.

PLN’s catalog of 16 niche sports includes the oft-viral combat sports CarJitsu and SlapFIGHT, as well as Xtreme Long Drive League, Strongman Champions, Major League Paintball, a three-on-three basketball league called str33t, and the World Putting League.

PLN owns the IP, runs the leagues, and produces the streams for these events, which it has created or acquired over its 18-month existence.

From the start, the goal was to fill two sports betting voids:

Filling gaps on the sports calendar
Bringing niche sports to the regulated market

In a December 2022 press release, Salvaris and PLN co-founder Bill Yucatonis explained the strategy like this:

“There are passionate fans out there of sports that don’t make it on ESPN. These audiences are significant, loyal, and, in many cases, already bet informally. We want to bring those fans, and their sports, to US betting operators and, at the same time, provide niche sports with a revenue stream that would allow them to sustain themselves.”

That raises the million-dollar question: Is there a betting audience for these products?

The audience certainly exists. According to Salvaris, who recently spoke with Straight to the Point, PLN properties have a combined social media following of 600,000, with the SlapFIGHT YouTube channel accounting for 250,000. A recent CarJitsu video received 5 million views in three weeks.

And those social stats are important, as Salvaris told Sportico in August, the focus is on making a product for streaming and betting. “We don’t care about ticket sales, concession sales, or anything like that,” Salvaris said. “We’re about the home-streaming experience and specifically the home-viewing and wagering experience.”

When asked about the sneering that usually accompanies the idea of betting on these niche sports, Salvaris told STTP that once you’ve established integrity, the question and answer is simple, “Does the sport have an audience? Then who am I to judge.”

And that’s where PLN comes in. Bringing a layer of integrity (U.S. Integrity evaluates PLN’s leagues) to these sports makes them safe for the athletes and wagering.

So far, so good, as three of PLN’s sports have been approved for betting in a total of 18 jurisdictions.

Why would a sportsbook add niche sports to its offerings? As Salvaris explained, even during the busiest parts of the sports calendar, there is a dearth of 24/7 betting options. The ability to place some small bets on niche products can engage new and existing bettors, or as Salvaris said, “Come for the CarJitsu; stay for the NFL.”

Beyond the Headline: Lightning in a Bottle

The World’s Strongest Man. The Ultimate Fighting Championship. The World Series of Poker.

Each started as a curiosity, or one might even say a gimmick, where the first event could very well have been the last. Each took a very niche activity and not only created a successful brand but also helped kickstart global phenomena—the proverbial lightning in a bottle.

Strongman in 1977, when the first World’s Strongest Man competition aired on CBS, and Strongman in 2023 are nearly unrecognizable. The sport grew in popularity when ESPN began airing episodes and exploded in popularity in the 1990s and 2000s with larger-than-life (and perfectly named) multi-time champions like Magnus Ver Magnusson and Mariusz Pudzianowski. Strongman has become so popular that everyday gymgoers (many unwittingly) have incorporated strongman exercises into their daily routines.

In 1993, the Ultimate Fighting Championship was born with a tooth flying into the crowd in the first-ever UFC fight. Rumor has it that the main sponsor, Gold’s Gym, washed its hand of the UFC halfway through the night. In 2023, the UFC is a multi-billion-dollar company that has merged with the WWE. Mixed martial arts are practiced across the globe.

For those interested in some of the history, the UFC recently released an interesting roundtable with six of the UFC 1 competitors.

The World Series of Poker began as a gimmick in every sense of the word. How do we get people to visit my Las Vegas casino in the middle of the summer? Assemble the living legends of gambling and let the masses watch them play high-stakes games. In 1970, fewer than ten people participated in the WSOP. In 2023, the number of entries for the Main Event was over 10,000. Not to mention the global ubiquity of poker.

But those are the success stories. Not every niche sport makes it to the big leagues. Arm wrestling, fencing, and Olympic weightlifting remain niche. Some sports had the potential to become mainstream - ultimate frisbee and surfing come to mind - but linger in the shadows. Many people participate in them, but they have difficulty capturing enough mainstream interest to break out of the niche category.

The problem is it’s really difficult to figure out what niche sport can and will break out. At multiple points in time, WSM, UFC, and WSOP were on the verge of disappearing, like so many other niche sports/leagues/brands.

The second issue is that even if a niche sport takes off, its relationship with betting is far from guaranteed. The UFC is growing as a betting market, but there is little to no market for Strongman betting. In effect, a niche sport has to catch lightning in a bottle twice; it has to grow an audience and position itself as a betting market.

It will be interesting to see if PLN’s focus on betting helps it identify sports with that potential.

Sponsorship opportunity

Want to sponsor the fastest-growing newsletter in the gambling space? Straight to the Point has multiple sponsorship opportunities available.

Reach out to Steve at iGamingPundit.com for more details.

In the Weeds with the MGC and Penn

Few operator-regulator relationships get into the weeds as much as Penn Entertainment’s dealing with the Massachusetts Gaming Commission.

The quibbling continued on Tuesday as Penn was back in front of the MGC to secure approval for its sports betting reboot with ESPN. At the end of the day, ESPN Bet was cleared to launch on November 14, but in true MGC fashion, we had to wind our way to yes (the obvious outcome).

As always, Jessica Welman diligently watched and reported on the proceedings on X, which you can find here. She is now less than 20 MGC hours away from qualifying for sainthood.

At issue was the use of the ESPN brand and when and where it constituted a gambling brand. These same questions dogged Penn when it was using the Barstool Sports brand - where does the media arm of the company end, and where does the sports betting arm begin?

According to Commissioner Eileen O’Brien, this is a distinction without a difference, and ESPN Bet is not being treated differently. “You’re not being treated differently than a similarly situated license. I think you are a licensee who is situationally different because of the branding you chose to do.”

As Jessica Welman tweeted, “Interim Exec Director Todd Grossman says the current interp[retation] of the regs seems to designate a difference between someone like Pat McAfee saying “I like this side of a bet” and McAfee saying “you, audience member, need to go bet this right now.”

Welman also highlighted a FanDuel ad featuring Bill Simmons. “It is also very strange that MGC has had nothing to say about MA’s other golden boy literally putting his name on a wager that people can bet but are going to nitpick ESPN personalities making predictions.”

This is putting the MGC in an increasingly tricky situation. The regulatory body continues to broaden its scope, and every encroachment is bringing up (and sometimes creating) more and more ancillary issues to address.

As Penn Entertainment’s Chief Strategy Officer, Chris Rogers, told the MGC, ESPN has provided the same integrations for Caesars and DraftKings in the past.

Reading between the lines of some of the other comments during the meeting, not everyone agrees with O’Brien’s declaration that ESPN Bet isn’t being treated differently. With a hint of concern that with its scrutiny of Penn-ESPN, the MGC now has to reexamine all of the sportsbook-media relationships.

Around the Watercooler

Social media conversations, rumors, and gossip.

Sporttrade CEO Alex Kane has some thoughts on the barrier to entry in some US states.

Should gambling embrace the liquor industry? That’s an interesting question proposed in this tweet I came across.

Stray Thoughts

I had a private conversation this week where I expressed my concerns that gambling regulators were overstepping their mandates in several jurisdictions. Few examples are better than this one from yesterday’s MGC hearing with Penn.

As I wrote in my October 31 newsletter:

“Another issue ESPN might have is that we’ve seen the MGC take an interest in Barstool’s activities outside of Massachusetts. The MGC prohibited Barstool’s College Football Show from college campuses and that it was 21+ after it learned of an incident in another state. Those same restrictions would heavily impact ESPN’s College Gameday show, as the audience isn’t age-gated, and takes place on campus.”

During Tuesday’s meeting, Penn preemptively put restrictor plates on the College Gameday show, per SBC Americas:

“ESPN College GameDay announcers will not be discussing or promoting ESPN Bet as part of the broadcast. That includes Pat McAfee, who is part of the College GameDay team and former spokesperson for FanDuel.
“Additionally, ESPN Bet will not do any on-site activations at college events. There will be no ESPN Bet signage either.”

The industry was high-fiving when Massachusetts legalized sports betting. I wonder if it’s having some buyer’s remorse, as the MGC’s brand of regulation starts to have national implications.