AUSTIN, Texas — There were sessions about tech, of course, and startups and investing and finance 3.0; film, media and music as well as summits about space, psychedelics, the cannabis industry and the future of work.
But this correspondent had to search to find the subject of sports-betting so credit to PointsBet and Sportico which alongside the president and founder of Austin FC hosted a panel entitled “Sports betting and the big picture” this past Sunday.
Of course, Texas is hardly the best territory in which to conduct discussions about the future of sports betting in the U.S.
As was noted by the aforementioned Andy Loughnane from Austin FC, with the state legislature not convening again until 2023, and the earliest an ensuing ballot measure could come not until 2024, it will be at least a couple of years before the state gets close to legal sports betting.
But this doesn’t mean that plans aren’t already afoot. As Loughnane pointed out, all 11 major league teams in Texas have formed a sports betting alliance, alongside the PGA Tour, the Texas Motor Speedway and key operators to push for a joint approach.
“From a competitive perspective, look at the Dallas Cowboys, they want to be on a level playing field with other NFL teams,” he said on the panel.
“There is complete unanimity,” he added. “We’re completely aligned on this particular subject. And I think that is a strength.”
Fever pitch
Loughnane’s confidence is such that Austin FC has already formed a sports betting partnership with PointsBet which involves signage at the stadium and a PointsBet branded bar.
PointsBet CMO Kyle Christensen noted the company was “only scratching the surface”.
“How do we bottle the fever?” he asked at one point.
The problem, as Chistensen said later on the panel, is that the long lead time for any chance of sports betting is such that to make any pronounced efforts would be counter-productive.
The partnership with Austin might help the company put together a database of potential customers, but without activation those efforts are almost worthless.
No representation at SXSW
A similar quandary surrounds the lack of much by way of content that dealt with sports betting at SXSW.
Mark Phillip, founder of MetaBet and an Austin resident for the past 20 years, says that this year’s sports content – in which the sports betting element would feature – was noticeably less than in previous years.
“Sports used to be a track, now it’s a summit,” notes, pointing out that this is a downgrade.
“Previously the sports track was sponsored by NBC and it was this big thing that took place at the Four Seasons.”
But this year Phillip suggests the lack of sports and sports betting content is, he feels, “disappointing.”
“It feels like the organizers maybe didn’t focus on it,” he added.
“My thinking is that Sportico came in with a bit of sponsorship and they got to pick and choose the panels,” Phillip said. “So Sportico should have known better and I’m surprised they didn’t pick up on it.”
The Dan Le Batard show at the Four Seasons
Apart from the one specific panel, there were further mentions of sports betting during the two days of the sports summit.
This included during a panel about investing in sports content which featured John Skipper, ex-CEO at ESPN and now in charge of content provider Meadowlark Media.
The name should be familiar; it is the company behind Dan Le Batard’s podcast that recently did a $50m sponsorship, monetization and distribution deal with DraftKings.
“It’s a pretty interesting and simple deal,” said Skipper on the panel. “Part of the agreement was we have complete creative freedom and it gives us as many opportunities as possible to distribute.”
“We feel great about that deal and it’s working for them. I would assume this is a model that will be replicated.”
To emphasize the point – and presumably the price paid for Skipper’s participation on the panel – that self-same show set itself up on the lawn out the back of the Four Seasons hotel in Austin. Swapping their usual Miami Beach home, Le Batard and his team disturbed the calm of the high-end Four Seasons crowd with two amped-up performances on Sunday and Monday.
More than any summit appearances or panel sessions, the podcast shows and their attendant DraftKings sponsorship, were a loud and significantly vibrant sign of the increasing footprint of sports-betting. An artificial lawn leading down to the banks of the Colorado river out back of a five-star hotel in downtown Austin was not perhaps the most obvious place to find the sports betting signal among the SXSW noise.
But it was there if you wanted to find it.
