- Fubo Gaming has announced a market access partnership with Caesars Entertainment.
- Fubo Gaming operates Fubo Sportsbook, a sports betting platform created by the gaming subsidiary of fuboTV.
- Fubo Sportsbook is live in Iowa and Arizona with a number of states ‘in the pipeline’ including New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Fubo Gaming signed a big promotional partnership with the Cleveland Cavaliers last week and picked up Ohio market access in the process. They’re back just a few days later with the announcement of a market access deal with Caesars Entertainment for Fubo Sportsbook in Mississippi, Louisiana and Missouri. This is an expansion of a previous market access deal with Caesars for New Jersey and Indiana announced in March 2021. The company has additional market access deals in Arizona, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. Fubo Gaming launched Fubo Sportsbook in late 2021 and the platform is live in Iowa and Arizona.
That’s the good news for Fubo Gaming which as picked up considerable momentum over the past six months. The bad news is that several of these markets have to be considered ‘speculative’ at this point. Mississippi’s fealty to fundamentalist religious nuts has kept mobile betting away for years and although there’s a renewed effort to make it happen its success is far from guaranteed. At least Mississippi has retail betting–Texas has the same ‘religious nut’ demographic and no sports betting whatsoever. In fact, Texas is one of the most ‘anti-gaming’ states in the US. Missouri will likely have mobile sports betting before either of the previously mentioned states.
Fortunately, the other states that Fubo Gaming has added to their ‘market access’ portfolio are all good ones. They’re already up and running in Iowa and Arizona. New Jersey, Indiana and Pennsylvania are top sports betting markets. Louisiana just launched mobile betting and Ohio is expected to launch soon. There’s also a few other jurisdictions where they should be able to pick up licensing including Colorado and Wyoming along with Canada’s largest province, Ontario.
I’ll let you enjoy the Fubo Sportsbook ‘elevator pitch’ from their press release:
Fubo Sportsbook is purpose-built to meet U.S. sports fans’ growing demand for interactivity through an industry-first integration of an owned-and-operated sports wagering platform with a live TV streaming experience. By integrating with fuboTV, the mobile app delivers personalized omniscreen experiences that turn passive viewers into active participants. Fubo Sportsbook’s proprietary feature, Watching Now, leverages fuboTV’s first-party user data to engage participants by recommending relevant bets based upon what they are streaming — even as they change the channel. Fubo Gaming intends to continue iterating the app, launching additional features that will further integrate wagering into the fuboTV platform, to create an even more immersive and personalized experience.
Scott Butera, president, Fubo Gaming, is as sharp a guy as you’ll find in the gaming industry. He’s pleased to add a few more states to his company’s market access portfolio:
“We are pleased to have the opportunity to extend our relationship with Caesars Entertainment as we expand access to Fubo Sportsbook across key markets in the U.S. Mississippi, Louisiana and Missouri all have passionate fan bases, particularly around college athletics, who will embrace our unique, immersive sports and wagering entertainment platform.”
Like every other company in the industry, Fubo Gaming’s primary problem in the near term is the horrible regulatory frameworks for sports betting created in many US states. There’s so many states bungling sports betting implementation or doing everything they can to protect financial benefactors or legacy gaming interests. This not only gives the citizens of their state a substandard sports betting product, it serves to keep innovation–and the companies that offer it–out of the market.
