With more cord-cutting options to choose from than ever before, sports fans have a veritable cornucopia of live services from which to pick.
Streaming services across the industry have started to add betting features alongside their sports feeds, offering a way to increase engagement and open a new revenue stream in the process. Disney, DAZN, FTV, Sling, and others have either launched betting companion features or have expressed an interest in entering the space in the US — and why wouldn’t they? Any savvy sports service would recognize betting has been synonymous with matches for as long as anyone can remember. And there’s plenty of money to be made.
“Sports fans have been unofficially making bets with their friends and family as they watch the game for decades,” Mike Berkley, chief product officer of FTV — which recently launched its own betting app — tells The Verge. “It’s kind of core to being a fan, making casual bets with friends and family, and it is something that we felt would make our product even more engaging than it is now.”
Look no further than streaming mastermind Disney — a typically family-friendly content purveyor — as: evidence that betting could be the next streaming battleground for any company that owns a live sports service. During the company’s most recent earnings call, Disney boss Bob Capek told shareholders that the company was “moving towards a greater presence in online sports betting” for its ESPN audiences, further stating that betting is something Disney is “keenly interested in and are pursuing aggressively.
“We do believe that sports betting is a very significant opportunity for the company,” Capek said. “And as we follow the consumer, we necessarily have to seriously consider getting into gambling in a bigger and bigger way.
Sports betting has been increasing on a state-by-state basis over the past few years. In May 2018, the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that prohibited sports gambling, paving the way for individual states to allow it. Today, about 34 percent of sports fans in the US bet weekly on sports, and spend an average of $51 a week, according to data firm Ampere Analysis. Sports enthusiasts are spending around 3.2 hours a week on fantasy gaming, data from the firm shows. This provides a huge opportunity for live sports services hoping to engage their users, differentiate their products and expand their business.
"The projection is that [the legalization of betting] will continue to grow aggressively by the state over the next few years," says Berkeley.
Disney is hardly the only company exploring betting avenues. Dish partnered with DraftKings earlier this year to add DraftKings' sports book as app integrations into its Dish TV Hopper platform. (Dish-owned live TV service Sling supports the integrated DraftKings experience as well as dedicated betting information channels for betting.) FTV launched its own proprietary sports book feature for betting in Iowa last month, and it currently The regulator is in the process of clearing. PON hindrance to operations in other states.
Streaming services are available and marketable? Becoming more fragmented and people are spending more and more money, how do we make sure we are not one of the disposable?' And that's why some sort of betting simplification comes in, says Mocha.
If and when sports betting becomes more common in streaming services, it will give streaming companies another distinctive feature that could potentially allow their sports services to succeed. It's a gamble like Netflix's gaming push – the more points of engagement, the better. But as with any streaming draw, the success of these betting implementations will largely depend on whether they can hold up to the crowd of similar or existing offerings, especially against Disney-like Goliath.
“There are a lot of different services in the US. So in the early stages, it will all be shiny and new, and it will attract an audience,” says Mocha “But it will be an evolution – to make sure the product is constantly being developed have to develop that audience to be engaged and make sure you stay ahead of the curve where everyone else is
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