SportsHandle: That was the week that was in US sports betting

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SportsHandle and friends deliver another round-up of the week’s big developments in US sports betting.

The Forces Behind Better Collective’s $240M Action Network Acquisition, And What The Future Holds

Author’s note: Better Collective owns the website Sports Handle. Sports Handle was acquired in November 2018 by the owners of RotoGrinders and US Bets, which were both acquired by BC in June 2019.  The author submits that the opinions expressed in this article are entirely his own. 

Danish-headquartered Better Collective, a company in the business of referring sports bettors to bookmakers for a fee, on Monday made a nearly quarter-billion dollar bet of its own on a sports wagering data/tech platform that’s digging deep roots into fertile legal U.S. sports betting soil.

The first sentence of the news release announcing BC’s acquisition of The Action Network, representing the culmination of a high-stakes auction, strikes partly as a flex. “With the acquisition of Action Network, Better Collective gains clear market leadership within sports betting media and affiliation in the US and now expects to increase its revenues in the US to more than 100 mUSD by 2022,” the announcement begins.

Full story here.

Caesars To Internally Rebrand Sportsbooks, Drop William Hill Name

To paraphrase William Shakespeare’s Mark Antony, “I came to bury William Hill, not praise it.”

Caesars Entertainment CEO Tom Reeg announced during an earnings conference call Wednesday the gaming giant will rebrand its retail sports betting operations from William Hill to Caesars and the online sports wagering app to Caesars Sports, with an eye on having both in place ahead of the upcoming football season.

“We’re going to rebrand our books at Caesars, rebrand our apps as Caesars Sports, and tie our business into our Caesars Rewards database,” he explained while detailing a robust first quarter earnings period. “As I look to what’s out there in sports, and do the analysis of the numbers, there are some things that make us optimistic. There’s a great correlation between spend and market share at this point.”

Full story here.

Diamondbacks To Open Caesars Sportsbook Adjacent To Chase Field

The Diamondbacks are the latest Arizona-based sports entity to team with a sports betting operator, announcing a partnership with Caesars Entertainment on Thursday that includes a retail sportsbook and bar adjacent to Chase Field with access to mobile sports wagering in the state.

Arizona legalized sports wagering last month, setting off a race among operators to pair off with teams, leagues, and/or professional sports venues for the 20 mobile and retail betting licenses tethered to professional sports facilities and tribal casinos. Of those 20 licenses, seven are expected to eventually be granted to pro sports facilities.

Full story here.

Details For Ohio Sports Betting Bill Released, Up To 40 Licenses Will Be Available

If you ever wanted to run your own sportsbook, now might be the time to move to Ohio, as details of the sports betting bill to be dropped later Thursday were announced at a 10 a.m. press conference.

First up: There will be up to 40 potential licenses issued, 20 each for what the bill’s sponsor Sen. Kirk Schuring is calling “Type A” and “Type B” licenses. Each license will cost $1 million, renewable every three years.

Type A licenses would be granted to existing facilities that can “bank the bet,” Schuring said, including the state’s 11 casinos and racinos. These licensees will be able to partner with operators who offer mobile apps.

Full story here.

A Wicked Awesome Update On New England Sports Betting

With six Patriots championships, four Red Sox titles, and one apiece for the Celtics and Bruins, New England sports fans have had very little to complain about this century.

In four of the six states that make up New England, however, sports fans who want to be able to wager on games legally do still have a little something to gripe about.

Actually, you could make a case that there’s cause for frustration in all six states. Rhode Island and New Hampshire allow mobile and brick-and-mortar sports betting, but both small states (ranked 43th and 41st in the nation in population, respectively) have an extremely limited menu of operators. In Rhode Island, which launched mobile sports wagering with in-person registration in late 2019, there’s just one app, powered by William Hill. In New Hampshire, DraftKings won the rights to a mobile betting monopoly that began in early 2020.

Full story here

TN Clears $1 Billion In Handle Since Sports Betting Kicked Off

April’s sports betting numbers aren’t available for public consumption yet, but we do know that Tennessee’s sports betting market has passed $1 billion in wagers.

That’s a hefty sum that might even impress Dr. Evil.

From Nov. 1 through the end of March, the books took $905 million in bets, according to the state lottery. March’s total was nearly $206 million. With April now finished, Tennessee is likely at around $1.1 billion in wagers since launch. The monthly average since launch was about $180 million, but that was during football season. The summer is the slow season for a sportsbook.

Full story here.