Analyst Chad Beynon of Macquarie expects sports betting and iGaming gross revenue to grow 30% in North America after a busier second quarter than expected.
Beynon now expects operators to report online revenue growth of 34% in the second quarter, up from his previous expectation of 21% following model updates before earnings season. He lowered both 2025 and 2026 expectations by 1 percentage point and now forecasts growth of 11% and 27%, respectively.
The third quarter is off to a “nice start,” he explained, based on an 11% hold rate in New York and the Euro Cup, Copa America and Wimbledon presenting new customer opportunities.
He expects handle to grow 20% on a same-store basis in July and August but warned September typically accounts for half of the quarter’s volume and can be volatile based on NFL betting results.
Three expected to outperform
Beynon said the North American segments for DraftKings, Flutter‘s FanDuel and Rush Street Interactive are “set up nicely to outperform in Q2.”
That is based on decent hold and lower promotional spending, he added. Based on New York, hold could be a drag for BetMGM and Caesars, Beynon said.
Argentina winning the Copa America was a neutral result, while Spain taking the Euro Cup was a negative for books, he said. Rush Street should benefit from the Copa result, though, as the company gets 13% of revenue from losing side Colombia.
BetMGM back from global IT outage
BetMGM had sports betting and iGaming back up and running Saturday after experiencing outages starting early Friday caused by the CrowdStrike error.
The brand’s customer support account on Twitter stated at 9:30 am Eastern Friday that there were “temporary issues” affecting BetMGM. The CrowdStrike error was fixed by manually rebooting servers, which meant BetMGM had to take a state-by-state approach to get operations back to full strength.
Casino was back online first followed by sports. BetMGM was back to normal around midday Saturday, saying it was back up and running just after 12 pm.
Poll on Olympic sports betting interest
More than a fifth of Olympic fans say they plan to bet on the games this year. That is according to a poll from Seton Hall and the Sharkey Institute that asked 1,611 people in June.
That 22% of Olympics fans joined 15% of the general population with plans to bet.
Nearly three in 10 people say betting should be allowed on the games at 29%. Another 38% said there should not be betting on the Olympics with the last 33% having no opinion.
FanDuel gets new IL sports betting partner
Slot route operator Accel Entertainment is adding a land-based casino to its portfolio that bears the FanDuel name.
Accel is buying Fairmount Park, which owns FanDuel Sportsbook & Horse Racing located on the outskirts of St. Louis, for about $35 million paid in 3.45 million shares.
The purchase has no impact on FanDuel’s online operations in Illinois.
Virginia regulator joins Scientific Games
The Virginia Lottery is losing the deputy executive director of its compliance division to Scientific Games.
Gina Smith oversaw the launch of sports betting in Virginia for the lottery. She previously was interim director, deputy director and CFO of the Maryland Lottery over 19 years.
Smith joins Scientific Games as its VP of lottery enterprise systems products.