- Carousel Group has rebranded their Colorado mobile sportsbook platform as MaximBet.
- Carousel announced a partnership with Maxim Media–publisher of Maxim Magazine–in early April 2021.
- The Carousel sportsbook previously operated under the SportsBetting.com brand.
With minimal fanfare the Colorado sportsbook formerly known as ‘SportsBetting.com’ has rebranded to ‘MaximBet’. This has happened in the last 24 hours with a SportsBetting.com Tweet announcing the move timestamped at 1:26 PM on Thursday, September 2. The Colorado Division of Gaming’s ‘Licensed Sports Books and Operators’ listing now reflects the new name. Yesterday, it listed only ‘Carousel Group’ though the website URL resolved to Sportsbetting.com. The only announcement I’ve found is the aforementioned Tweet which is somewhat strange as you’d think they’d have sent out a press release so that media outlets would report the change. I wouldn’t have noticed had I not been looking for some unrelated information on the Colorado Division of Gaming website.
The SportsBook.com main index page is still active:
If you click on the ‘visit our sportsbook’ link, however, you get redirected to MaximBet with this splash screen:
Eventually ending up at the new MaximBet website:
The Colorado Division of Gaming’s ‘Licensed Sports Books and Operators’ listings have been updated to reflect the rebrand:
Yesterday, the listing was just for ‘Carousel Group’ though the URL in the ‘website’ link was Sportsbetting.com:
The timestamp on the Google cache view of the Division of Gaming page referenced above is 15:23:12 GMT on September 2nd. If I remember correctly, that would translate to 9:23 AM Mountain Daylight Time.
Here’s the Sportsbetting.com Tweet announcing the rebrand:
Here’s the pinned ‘welcome’ Tweet over MaximBet:
SportsBetting.com went live in Colorado on September 21, 2020. In February 2021, Carousel announced a market access deal with Caesars Entertainment for New Jersey, Iowa and Indiana. Unless I’m mistaken they’ve yet to launch in any of these jurisdictions.
Carousel announced their partnership with Maxim–aka the publishers of the long running Maxim Magazine–in April 2021. At the time, they gave a 90 day timeline for launch which they didn’t quite make. They also announced a $50 million USD funding round either simultaneous to or in conjunction with the Maxim partnership. The influence of the magazine isn’t what it once was–particularly in the US–but that can be said about every print publication. They’ve done a nice job pivoting to a web centric content provider and pull in over 8 million unique visitors per month. At the time of the announcement we looked at some of the Maxim Magazine demographics suggesting their readership is a killer market for sports betting:
For more detailed analysis on how the Maxim demos should provide a nice synergy with the Carousel Group’s sports betting platform you can read the original article we did when the partnership was announced:
MAXIM PARTNERS WITH CAROUSEL GROUP FOR SPORTS BETTING PLATFORM
For Carousel, the rebrand is a no-brainer–and particularly if that $50 mil funding round was contingent on the Maxim deal. Overat the Maxim Mag website there’s already a big promo for the sportsbook front and center on the main page:
There’s a story about the launch at Maxim.com though they’re reporting it as a ‘new launch’ with no reference to the previous incarnation as SportsBetting.com. They also tease the arrival of the ‘Maxim Casino’ which will presumably debut in New Jersey.
