The Early Line: Super Bowl Betting Arrives; Betcris Returns To US
TCL offers a roundup of recent US gambling news called The Early Line every Monday.
Chiefs go for three-peat in Super Bowl against the Eagles | Championship Sunday is in the books, and we’ll get a rematch from two years ago in the Big Game. Most sportsbooks seem to have settled on the Chiefs being 1.5-point favorites (FanDuel here) to win the game after they survived the Buffalo Bills on Sunday night.
Reading the line: The Super Bowl is the biggest single-game event for betting in the United States by a mile. And this year we’ll add in legal prediction markets; there’s been a million dollars traded at Kalshi so far on the game. Storylines to watch: 1. Who will have Super Bowl commercials? We know FanDuel is doing Kick of Destiny 3 with Peyton and Eli Manning, but will anyone else join the fray? 2. Between now and the start of the next football season, there are precious few major customer acquisition points for sportsbooks. There’s the Super Bowl and March Madness. Will Fanatics (a rising No. 4 in the US landscape) or ESPN Bet (languishing at the bottom of the “Big 6”) be able to make a push before the doldrums of the summer?
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BetCris returns to US with Arizona sports betting launch (SBC Americas) | “When Plannatech announced it received a license in Arizona via a partnership with San Carlos Apache Tribal Gaming Enterprise, the assumption around the industry was that Prime Sportsbook, the brand used by Planantech in New Jersey and Ohio. However, the announcement that Plannatech was receiving a license from the Arizona Department of Gaming did not mention Prime by name. Instead, it will be BetCris going live sometime this week.”
Reading the line: Pretty interesting moment in US sports betting history. The Betcris brand once served the US as an offshore sportsbook, exiting almost two decades ago. Fast forward to today, and the tech platform and brand name, at least, have been licensed in one US jurisdiction. Betcris is known for being a sharp book whose lines have been copied by others. It will be interesting to see if we start seeing the BetCris brand pop up in any other jurisdictions, and if it can get any traction in a very different — and regulated — environment for online sports betting.The sweepstakes conundrum | Some interesting context from Legal Sports Report on an effort to legalize online casinos from Sen. Joe Addabbo in New York. “Addabbo said sweepstakes are legal in New York. That will remain true unless the state administratively bans them. … Addabbo said it would be good to incorporate it into online gambling, which he hopes to legalize to help cut down on the robust illegal market that could cost New York billions of dollars annually.”
Reading the line: A bit of good news and bad news here if you’re the sweepstakes industry. They’re legal, an important NY lawmaker says. Hooray! They are gambling operations and shouldn’t be legal unless they are regulated like online casinos. Boooooo! The sweepstakes industry is trying to thread a pretty narrow needle here. They want to assert their current legality while advocating for real or quasi- or self-regulation of the industry. An outcome where they need to be licensed like any other online casino would be a pretty bad outcome for an industry that has more than a hundred operators. Only a few might make the cut, even if they want to stay in a state as part of an online casino regime (they likely would not). Meanwhile, more good news/bad news: Despite projected budget deficits, it’s not clear New York will make a serious push to legalize online casinos this year. But there’s a non-zero chance it happens. And Addabbo’s bill furthers a narrative gaining traction that the sweepstakes industry needs to be treated like real-money gaming.
Gambling news today
The Man Who Took On Big Tobacco Has a New Target: Sports Betting (Time): “Daynard has been fighting big public-health battles for decades. He played a foundational role building landmark legal cases in the 1980s and ’90s against U.S. tobacco companies, which ultimately resulted in cigarette manufacturers’ agreeing to pay more than $200 billion in settlement funds to the states. Now, at 81, he is no less indignant about the way companies seem to put profits over customer well-being. His latest objective is curtailing the excesses of sports gambling. ‘We’re talking,’ says Daynard, ‘about addiction.’ Look, more gambling means more public health concerns and addiction, that’s undoubtedly the case. But there’s a pretty vast chasm separating the harms of sports betting and tobacco; tobacco is literally harmful to everyone who uses it, as well as to others in some cases!
America Has Fallen in Love With Long-Shot Sports Bets (WSJ, paywall).
Kero Gaming forms live sports betting partnership with Caesars Entertainment (Next.io): Kero Sports, an industry leader in contextual micro sports betting markets, today announced a partnership with Caesars Entertainment to further enhance its live sports betting markets on the Caesars Sportsbook app. The partnership elevates Caesars Sportsbook’s live betting markets and provides Caesars players with access to first-of-its-kind contextual markets across all major domestic and international football, basketball, baseball, and soccer leagues.”
Sports betting in NC: off to a fast and destructive start (Salisbury Post): Nothing terribly noteworthy here, more of the typical negative coverage the sports betting industry has gotten without much attempt to tell the industry’s side. I do think it’s funny on this article there are links to odds/picks content (see image), complete with affiliate links for BetMGM!
• “Taylor Swift Triggered a Tsunami of Sports Bets. Then She Stopped Turning Up (Wired): An aside, PLEASE STOP COVERING OFFSHORE SPORTSBOOKS LIKE THEY ARE THE SAME AS REGULATED SPORTSBOOKS.
Skill gaming is coming
Toast is building real-time strategy-based skill games that are designed for bettors. Peer-to-peer gin rummy and blackjack are already available, with a basketball game going live in Q1. Toast’s games are built for easy integration with any platform. For a demo or to learn more, email connect@playtoast.com.
Gambling newsletters roundup
The Cashout: The Rise Of Bet365 In US Sports Betting (TCL paywall): “We can best see evidence of Bet365’s rise in Pennsylvania, where it just went live in July. Despite a late start, 365 has already joined a free-for-all with Caesars, Fanatics and ESPN Bet in the race to be the No. 4 operator. 365 has been anywhere from 3-4.5% of both handle and GGR in the state throughout the fall.”
The ol’ razzle dazzle: ‘Shiny’ Fanatics propelled into OSB Tier 2 - Earnings + More
Philadelphia, Kansas City Advance to Super Bowl Rematch - Figure It Out
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