The magnificent seven: The news that BetMGM, FOX Bet, PointsBet and WynnBet joining Caesars Entertainment, DraftKings and FanDuel as official NFL sports-betting partners inevitably means the upcoming season is likely to be accompanied by a soundtrack of incessant betting advertising campaigns. Certainly, if sports-betting follows the DFS playbook from 2015 then the possibility of avoiding some big spending campaigns is slim; witness the launch this week of a $100m advertising blitz by WynnBET with an ad featuring Shaq O’Neal and Ben Affleck. For Sam Swanell, CEO of Pointsbet, operators must “get the brand out there” to acquire players and the companies not “advertising around those assets and getting access to those clients will suffer for it.”
Zero loyalty: In May, Jay Snowden, CEO of Barstool Sportsbook’s parent company Penn National Gaming, criticized the “all day, every day” nature of betting adverts and said the levels of advertising were “overwhelming” and created “zero loyalty.” Barstool believes it has a different way of reaching the public via its social media presence (and the exclusive broadcast rights to this year’s NCAA Arizona Bowl) and will add to that via TheScore, for which the group shelled out $2bn.
Media overload: Industry-watchers won’t be the only ones keeping a close eye on the advertising output, not just during NFL coverage but also surrounding much other sports programming. In this regard, the lesson from the UK market experience is instructive where bet365 arguably reached its dominant position thanks in no small part to its all-pervasive Ray Winstone, bet “in play now” campaigns. Such was the Stoke firm’s success, however, that the prevalence of gambling ads generally became the focus of attacks from critics and contributed to a large extent in the anti-gambling backlash experienced in recent years.
Additional articles available on Earnings + More:
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