- The Daily Racing Form branded sportsbook, DRF Sports, has launched in Iowa.
- DRF Sports and the Daily Racing Form are owned by Las Vegas based Affinity Interactive which also owns land based gaming properties in Nevada, Missouri and Iowa.
- DRF Sports is powered with Kambi technology and anticipates launching in additional US states during 2022.
Affinity Interactive has been stepping up their mobile and online sports betting efforts during the past couple of months and they’re now ‘live’ in Iowa. More specifically, they’ve launched their Daily Racing Form branded sportsbook–DRF Sports–in Iowa with additional states in the pipeline.
The venerable horse racing publication has been expanding their sports betting offerings since the US Supreme Court overturned PASPA. Initially, this took the form of content with DRF serving up sports betting data and analysis at https://www.drf.com/sports. Their move toward launching an online sportsbook began to take form with the merger of DRF’s parent company (Sports Information Group) with Infinity Gaming in July 2021. Here’s how I explained the deal in a previous article about DRF Sports:
Quick sidebar here to explain who Affinity Interactive is and what they do. If you want even more detail, you can check out the press release which outlines the July 2021 merger between two Z Capital Partners owned companies–Affinity Gaming and Sports Information Group. At the time of the merger, Affinity Gaming was a land based casino operator while Sports Information Group was best known for their ownership of the Daily Racing Form. The combined companies are now known as Affinity Interactive and here’s how they describe their business in the blurb from their website:
With Affinity’s leading regional casinos in Nevada, Missouri and Iowa, and Sports Information Group’s advanced technology, digital and media platforms, online betting presence, and nearly one million combined customers, Affinity Interactive is creating a leader in today’s gaming industry with a world class digital offering with significant growth opportunities.
Affinity Gaming is now ‘officially’ a subsidiary of Affinity Interactive and they own eight casinos in Nevada, Iowa and Missouri. The Nevada properties include the Silver Sevens Hotel & Casino on the corner of Flamingo and Paradise in Las Vegas (formerly Terrible’s Hotel & Casino and before that the Continental Hotel & Casino), the Rail City Casino in Sparks (known from 1978 to 1997 as the Plantation Casino) and three properties in Primm near the California border. The Primm properties are Whiskey Pete’s, Primm Valley Resort and Buffalo Bill’s. As of mid-December, Buffalo Bill’s remains closed along with the hotel at Whiskey’s Pete’s (the casino is now open 24/7). Primm, Nevada has an interesting and lengthy history itself dating back to the opening of Whiskey Pete’s by the Primm family in 1977. At some point, I’ll do an article about the history of the Primm Valley Resorts.
Heading to the midwest, Affinity Gaming owns the Mark Twain Casino in La Grange, Missouri (just over the border from Quincy, Illinois) and the St. Jo Frontier Casino in St. Joseph’s, Missouri which is on the other side of the state on the border with Kansas. The property that is most crucial to this story–in the short term, at least–is the Lakeside Hotel Casino in Osceola, Iowa. This property is located on I-35 just under an hour south of Des Moines and around a half hour north of the Missouri State line. DRF Sports is slated to launch first in Iowa and the gaming license held by the Lakeside Hotel Casino will no doubt facilitate that.
Affinity Interactive recently announced that Kambi would provide technology for online and retail sports betting which ties everything in the portfolio together nicely. They had already launched a DRF branded advance deposit wagering platform called DRF Bets. Here’s the blurb from the press release announcing the DRF Sports launch in Iowa:
Daily Racing Form (“DRF”), a leading provider of premium data and authoritative editorial coverage to horse racing and sports enthusiasts in North America, today announced the launch of its first online sportsbook in Iowa at https://ia.drf.com/sports.
The sportsbook, which is powered by DRF Bets™, one of America’s fastest-growing online and mobile wagering platforms, is the latest milestone in DRF’s ambitious plans to scale its sports betting offering and meet growing customer demand.
Now live and available to all sports fans in Iowa, DRF offers wagers on all approved major U.S. and international sports, with multiple different bet types, including moneyline, points spread, over/under, parlays and live/in-game betting. The new DRF Sportsbook follows the launches of the DRF Sports website in September 2021 and the DRF Cash Grab free-to-play sports prediction app in October.
Itay Fisher, Chief Digital Officer at Affinity Interactive, is no doubt thrilled to have the DRF Sports platform up and running in Iowa:
“The DRF sportsbook launch is a key event for Affinity Interactive’s ever-growing platform. Iowa was a natural choice for our first sportsbook offering given our established presence at Lakeside Casino in Osceola. As we continue to optimize and integrate our complementary land-based and interactive properties, we are highly focused on positioning our platform as the go-to sports betting destination.”
James Zenni, Chairman of Affinity Interactive, is excited to establish his company as a player in online and retail sports betting:
“The DRF sportsbook launch is a key event for Affinity Interactive’s ever-growing platform. Iowa was a natural choice for our first sportsbook offering given our established presence at Lakeside Casino in Osceola. As we continue to optimize and integrate our complementary land-based and interactive properties, we are highly focused on positioning our platform as the go-to sports betting destination.”
At some point, the retail sportsbook at Iowa’s Lakeside Casino–along with Affinity’s Nevada sportsbooks– will likely be rebranded under the DRF Sports marquee. For now, all of these properties offer a William Hill operated sportsbook but with Caesars Entertainment looking to get out of the third party management segment that could change quickly. The other obstacle that Affinity faces in establishing DRF Sports on a national level is the same one that the entire industry faces–the horrible regulatory framework most states have established for sports betting.
