What Can We Learn About Sports Betting From App Store Rankings As NFL Begins?
FanDuel is crushing it and fantasy pick'em is popular
The real answer is “not that much.” However, we can at least find some directionally interesting things about sports betting and fantasy pick’em apps based on the App Store charts for sports as the NFL season begins.
App Store rankings and downloads don’t necessarily mean success. Remember when ESPN Bet was crushing it in downloads in the fall before it fell back to Earth this summer?
So, yeah, my takes won’t be molten lava, but it’s still worth a heat check to see what is going on.
FanDuel is doing very well
Over the weekend, it was FanDuel and DraftKings in the top five, with those two leading the way among all betting apps.
Today, FanDuel is No. 1 for all sports apps, and reaching the top five among ALL free apps. If I check the numbers — math, math, math — that’s pretty impressive. Given FanDuel’s track record of being No. 1 and strength of acquiring and activating users, I’d say it’s bad news for anyone who wants to put a dent in their market share.
DraftKings, of course, is doing very well in the App Store as well, just not as well.
PrizePicks and Underdog in fantasy pick’em
The App Store seems like a good proxy for where the fantasy pick’em industry stands today.
Both PrizePicks and Underdog Fantasy have been around the top 10 in sports apps this weekend, in that order. That lines up with conventional wisdom, with PrizePicks the market leader, and Underdog some distance behind them. Sleeper has been in the top 15, with Betr around the top 30.
It’s also interesting that DraftKings Pick 6, a peer-to-peer fantasy pick’em game, has been in the top 20.
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Hard Rock rising
Hard Rock’s betting app has been in the top 15 for sports every time I have looked. A lot of that is because it’s the only legal/regulated betting app in Florida. I am guessing it would be No. 1 for sports in just Florida if we had that kind of data.
It will be interesting to see if any of that momentum translates to increased usage in states where Hard Rock offers legal sports betting or online casino.
Sweepstakes sportsbooks
While there has been a lot of talk around sweepstakes sports betting of late, that’s not resulting in tons of adoption of most of those apps, at least in the App Store. We do see Fliff — the market leader among sweepstakes sportsbooks — hovering around the top 30 in sports apps this weekend.
The others — both betting exchanges and against-the-house/social — don’t seem to be generating a critical mass of interest in the App Store.
The rest of regulated sports betting
The other major players in US sports betting are clustered together in the 20-40 top sports apps range. Bet365 seems to be leading the way, despite being in fewer states, followed by BetMGM, Fanatics and ESPN Bet often clustered together. Of this tier of five apps, Caesars seems to be lagging behind the other four.
ESPN Bet has never been through the start of an NFL season, so I’d say it’s notable they aren’t higher. (It’s worth noting the ESPN and ESPN Fantasy apps are in the top 10 as well.) We might also see a spike for Monday Night Football.
What does it all mean? Again, I wouldn’t read too much into it. But a lot of this serves as a sanity check for the pecking order of the sports betting/fantasy pick’em/sweeps companies, both within their own niches and across all these forms of gaming.
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