Part 3: Mobile and more
term sustainable. Caesars has very
little market share right now but will
that be the case in a year?”
He adds that many of the bigger
names are still effectively getting
their ducks in a row in terms of
product. “Some are reluctant to do
the marketing because they are
lacking product or lacking payment
options. You won’t undertake big
marketing spend if you are not
confident on your models.”
He adds, though, that it is worth
pointing out that those that did hit
the ground running had prepared for
the moment ahead of time. “Those
with something of a US strategy had
something on which to build and
were out of the blocks early,” he says.
There’s definitely an
argument to say it’s
the first true straight-
to-mobile regulated
market.
Max Meltzer, Kambi
A mobile and cross-sell market
One early trend that can be
relied upon to continue as the
market powers on this year is the
dominance of mobile betting.
Max Meltzer from Kambi, which
provides the back end to DraftKings,
Something like 30%
market share to
DraftKings is likely not
long-term sustainable.
Neale Deeley, Sportradar
16
points to data that shows that
mobile is driving up to 85% of
online and over half of all sports
betting revenues. “There’s definitely
an argument to say it’s the first
true straight-to-mobile regulated
market,” he says. “As we can see
from other ecommerce industries,
mobile is the device of choice and
nothing in the near future is going to
change that – and online betting is
no different.”
Yet echoing Deeley’s point,
Meltzer adds that this remains early
days for all the mobile propositions
available in the market. “It’s also
worth remembering that for many
operators in New Jersey, the mobile
sportsbook they have released to
the market is just the first iteration,
so you can expect many more
mobile upgrades and innovations
to come, further driving player
engagement,” he says.
What is also clear is the extent
to which, as noted, the addition
of sports betting to the available
products in New Jersey also
provides a boost in terms of cross-
sell. This isn’t just being played
out in terms of sports into casino;
according to Carter from SBTech,
the omni-channel approach being
taken by most operators is also
seeing sports betting action migrate
to the land-based casinos.
“It will definitely be
complementary to online casino and
even land-based casino,” he says. “If
we look at sportsbooks in Europe,
most of the market leaders generate
nearly 50% of their revenue from
casino and so I would expect to see
a similar trend evolve in New Jersey
over the coming years.”
The advantage of the cross-sell
opportunities is that revenues can be
maximised. “We also have seen that
casinos with a land-based presence
in a market are able to register new
players at their properties, which
in turn, enables them to actively
connect and engage with those
players when they leave the casino
property,” says Schwartz at Rush
Street Interactive.
What will also evolve is the
pattern of betting behaviour.
Pointing to the more pronounced
seasonality apparent in US sports
betting compared with Europe,
Carter also suggests that betting
habits will evolve.
“In-play is still very limited as a
percentage of overall staking in
the US, versus in Europe where it
represents the majority, but again as
the market matures and consumers
become more familiar with other
sports and in-play, then this will
materially increase over the coming
years,” he says.
Schwartz notes that unlike
New Jersey: data and lessons from the first five years of the US’ leading digital market