The Cashout: US Sportsbooks Are Rebounding In January
News roundup: DraftKings CEO talks sports prediction markets; Indiana online casino bill dies.
TCL will offer market analysis in the US gambling space in The Cashout every Friday to paid subscribers, along with a news roundup for free subscribers.
I’ll run down the early metrics for January sports betting, where hold has rebounded after a long December for US sportsbooks, no one is eating into FanDuel and DraftKings, and ESPN Bet is still struggling,
But first, a roundup of recent gambling news:
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Gambling news roundup
Indiana online casino bill dies (Legal Sports Report): “Another online casino bill is done for the 2025 session, as Indiana House leadership told media it would not move further this year. House Speaker Todd Huston told media Thursday that House Bill 1432 will not receive a floor vote this year, per the Indiana Capital Chronicle. Rep. Ethan Manning’s online casino bill passed out of the House Public Policy Committee last month before not receiving a hearing in the Ways and Means Committee.”
The odds of any state legalizing online casino this year gets longer with this news, as this was one of the places it’s been considered in the past.
The bill also would have legalized online lottery.
Will DraftKings and FanDuel get into prediction markets for sports?: From Chris Grove on Twitter: “The only thing new I’d add is that I suspect DraftKings and FanDuel are likely to aggressively pursue partnerships with Kalshi et al as a way to expedite their entry into prediction markets and blunt the competitive impact.”
Sportico offered the following regarding DK: “Robins said his company is not spending any lobbying dollars on the topic and does not have a problem with the competition from fintech companies. ‘I don’t view it as a threat,” he said. ‘It increases the total addressable market for people who like those types of products, which is a good thing.’
That doesn’t seem like a surprising take from an operator, to be honest, and especially not from one that has been the most aggressive of the lot. DraftKings would rather be a part of this, should it continue to expand and remain legal; it would be tougher to backtrack if they pounded their fist saying this should be illegal.
If the lid is off sports event trading moving forward — which seems increasingly likely — it does feel inevitable that sportsbooks will get involved. That’s particularly true for them in the states most of them can’t serve now (ie California, Texas and Florida). It’s going to be a wild time for everyone — operators, state regulators, sports leagues — if sports event trading continues to grow unabated.
Going into California for sports event trading seems perilous for anyone who wants to serve CA if and when it legalizes sports betting, given the tribes’ stance to date. That being said, we appear to be years away from legalization of online sports betting, and it’s not clear how great a regulatory regime would even be for operators like DraftKings.
Here’s my latest on prediction markets at my other newsletter, The Event Horizon:
Meanwhile, I am still waiting for the media to wake up…: News outlets continue to decry regulated sports betting (the latest here in the NYT and Harvard Magazine) while Kalshi is operating a sportsbook in all 50 states, and getting celebrated for it. Make it make sense. I do think it would be a very funny outcome if we have all of this hand-wringing about highly regulated and taxed sports betting and then we just end up with a quasi-regulated nationwide sports betting model. Nothing to see here!
Finally, Kalshi is adding a market for who will the NBA All-Star game; that market will go live on Saturday.
DraftKings + Crypto = ?: “At the end of DraftKings’ fourth-quarter earnings call Friday, Co-founder and CEO Jason Robins was asked whether the company would ever accept cryptocurrency payments. “It’s certainly something we’re looking at,” he told analysts. “It’s also getting regulators comfortable with it. They’re usually cautious around crypto. There are only a handful of states open to it at the moment, but if it grows to a larger number of states, it’s something we’d take a longer look at.”
This is kind of a non-answer for a question that’s hard to answer. Sure, DraftKings and other operators would love to take crypto. But there’s currently little momentum at the state level to allow it.
Gambling Prohibition in Vermont? Lawmakers Seek to Repeal Lottery and Sports Betting (PlayUSA): “A trio of Vermont state representatives have submitted a bill that would repeal the state laws legalizing sports betting and the lottery, effectively bringing an end to any form of legal gaming in the state.
Rep. Troy Headrick, a co-sponsor of H.133, told PlayUSA that he supports the bill because he believes gaming is a form of regressive taxation.”
Gambling newsletters
January sports betting numbers
After a bad December for sportsbooks, it looks like things have returned to normal from the early returns. (In case you missed it, here’s my roundup of the VERY early numbers from Super Bowl betting in a handful of states.)
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