Weekender: MO Sports Betting; Sweepstakes Wars; Hard Rock's Footprint
Missouri's sports betting initiative is on thin ice. Licensed operators take aim at sweepstakes casinos. Is Hard Rock the real challenger to DraftKings and FanDuel?
The Bulletin Board
ABOVE the FOLD: A look at the three biggest stories of the week.
— Missouri sports betting is hanging on by a thread.
— The industry is picking a fight with sweepstakes casinos.
— Hard Rock grows its online footprint.
HOUSEKEEPING: A look at recent podcasts, featured articles, and more from yours truly.
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Missouri Sports Betting Trends Negative
Missouri was poised to be the only bright spot for legalization in 2024, but even the Show-Me State now looks like a pretender rather than a contender.
A lawsuit, which will have its first court date on September 5, is challenging the initiative’s eligibility. It claims that Missouri Secretary of State John “Jay” Ashcroft improperly certified the ballot initiative in as many as four possible ways.
Read my latest coverage of Missouri
Stay tuned. As I’ll detail on Monday, we are starting to get a clearer picture of who intends to oppose the initiative if it makes the ballot.
Sweepstakes Continue to Be a Hot Topic
Sweepstakes gambling sites are on a collision course with the licensed online gambling industry, which is suddenly very aware of and angry about their existence.
“It’s time to pull the alarm bell on this one, folks,” Howard Glaser, Light & Wonder’s head of governmental affairs, recently said.
But sweepstakes sites appear ready to fight back (and I suspect their voices will become more united as the heat gets turned up).
“We entirely reject several of the AGA’s assertions,” a spokesman for Virtual Gaming Worlds (operators of Global Poker, Chumba Casino, and Luckyland Casino) said. “We have full confidence in our compliance with all laws and regulations where we operate.”
I wrote about sweepstakes in the newsletter last week, and they are also prominent in this week’s feature column.
Hard Rock Looks Like the Real Challenger Brand
Heading into 2024, everyone (including myself) was focused on ESPN Bet, Bet365, and Fanatics as the top challenger brands. Well, it’s time to readjust.
ESPN Bet is still on standby. Bet365 looks like the real deal, but it still has a long way to go. And outside of a brief blip in New Jersey, Fanatic’s performance has been underwhelming.
But there is another, and that other is Hard Rock.
Hard Rock launched in Illinois last week, and as I wrote, “With its Florida monopoly, Hard Rock is quickly becoming a national player in the mobile sports betting space” and could overtake BetMGM as the #3 operator in the US market by the end of the year.
Housekeeping
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PODCASTS:
This week’s guest on the Talking Shop Podcast was Jonathan Michaels, the principal at Micaels Strategies, formerly Sightline Payments and the American Gaming Association. Jonathan and I discussed a wide range of issues, including the industry’s many changes in the last decade.
You can listen to my discussion with Jonathan here.
COLUMNS:
In this week’s feature column, I look at how arguments that have been used against online casino legalization for a decade are now coming out of the mouths of online casino supporters. As I wrote on Friday, “Cannibalization, job loss, underage betting, social harm, skirting tax obligations, and money laundering concerns. Sound familiar?” Well, they should because these are the very talking points that have held back online casino legalization.