As everyone in the gambling industry must know by now, there’s a tremendous gold rush going on in the US market thanks to the legalisation of sports betting. This is really a unique situation, in that international and foreign operators have an edge over the major U.S. gambling entities simply due to the fact that, in many cases, these firms have literally decades of experience operating sports betting services in their home countries to draw on.
This is not to say, of course, that domestic operators won’t be looking to secure their rightful slice of the pie, but UK and other European operators have a significant opportunity to set up shop in the US based on their expertise. British operators have the best edge of all, given the common language.
The big names are leading the rush. The one grabbing headlines lately has been William Hill, which not only recently entered into a partnership with Eldorado Casinos but also announced plans to establish further partnerships with casinos across fourteen states. They also intend to offer sports betting risk management services, a fine notion in a nation so new to legalised sports betting.
Other major UK names entering the market include Bet365, who inked a deal with the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City, and Paddy Power, who recently bought out the major US fantasy sports service FanDuel. The Stars Group have also launched BetStars in New Jersey.
An interesting twist on this is the scope for intermediary tech companies to come in on the action. Las Vegas-based tech company SinglePoint, for example, have chosen to invest in a new service by the name of StakeHaul, an app which allows punters to bet socially on almost anything at all, including personal activities and world events. There will surely be many such apps emergent on the US scene now, including those targeting businesses rather than individual users.
It’s a wild time out there, and there’s a lot of room to play in this very new legalised field. We can expect many more operators, small and large, international and domestic, to flock to the action over the year ahead.
