What We Expect From 2024 NFL Betting | Sports Betting News
As Week 1 of the 2024 NFL season arrives, the crew discusses how many ads we’ll see during the games, whether sportsbooks will send promos to retain existing customers while trying to recruit new ones, and which sports betting operators face the most important tests as the biggest time of the year arrives for their bottom lines.
Full transcript
Matt Brown (00:15):
Hello, and welcome to episode number 248 of the LSR Podcast. My name is Matt Brown, joined each and every week by the brightest minds in all of the gaming industry. With me, I have Adam Candee. You can find him over on the X. It’s the first time I’ve ever said that. I’ve always said the Twitter.
Adam Candee (00:29):
Oh, Matt.
Matt Brown (00:31):
I know. I’ve never said it before. It felt weird. I’m never doing it again. I’m going to call it the Twitter-
Adam Candee (00:35):
Good.
Matt Brown (00:35):
Until the day I die. Over on the Twitter machine, @AdamCandee. That’s two E’s, no Y. If you hate yourself, you can follow me, @MattBrownM2.
(00:43):
Not a crazy amount of news coming out of the holiday here, Adam, but we decided instead of skipping a week, it is heading into football season. We decided, “Hey, let’s talk about some of the topics that we’ll be paying attention to as we head into football season.”
(00:57):
The first and foremost is, hey, what is this … Let’s not even say opening weekend. What is this opening month of football season going to look like? From an ad standpoint, are we going to see all the big boys coming in really, really hard, right from the get-go? Are we going to see some of the newbies? If you live in a state where 365 is starting to make a push, are you going to see a bunch of that? What about Fanatics? What are we going to get with all that?
(01:21):
It comes down to we know for sure that, because we saw some announcements, there will be at least some of these guys coming back. Some of the Mannings and whatnots of the world, that are going to be helping some of these sportsbooks promote. But how much, how often is what we’re looking for.
Adam Candee (01:38):
I think not only us within the industry, but sports fans at large. And then, once we get to the bigger discussion of the congressional action that is sitting there that is not going to go anywhere anytime soon. But certainly, would have an effect on the ability of sportsbooks to advertise moving forward. Everyone involved in any of those phases will be paying attention to what’s going on right now.
(02:03):
I think the ultimate question comes down to sportsbooks that have said, “We’re not going to spend as much.” Are you willing to do that at the beginning of football season? Are you willing to do that at the primest of prime acquisition times for customers? There are bigger questions at play here. Does anyone think that certain customers that were at some of the smaller sportsbooks that have shut down are available? Probably not a huge question for us to answer, so we’ll start in reverse order here.
(02:31):
We then look and say, all right, if you’re looking at the DraftKings customers, are you thinking that DraftKings potentially could be a little soft based on everything that just happened with the surcharge? Are some of their bettors potentially ones that you might want to go after with some sort of value propositions? OK.
(02:48):
I think you also then naturally begin to look at the new entrants, and that’s really where we’re focused at the moment. You talk about 365 in their new states. You then talk about North Carolina going through its first full football season of an online launch. Then of course, you look at what Fanatics and of course ESPN Bet are going to do coming into this football season.
The crew discusses how many ads we’ll see during games
(03:10):
We’re curious, in terms of that customer acquisition part. But specific to the advertising, like you said, Matt. That’s where people tend to really notice the nexus between sports betting and sports at large, is when they tune into a football broadcast. And they say, “Oh my God, I can’t get away from the sportsbook ads.” How will that be handled? I believe it will be handled somewhat responsibly because I don’t think it’s been overwhelming here in the past. Maybe it’s just having too much context from the DFS days and what it looked like at that time, and I think it’s better than that. Maybe better than that isn’t better enough for some people out there. We’ll find out more.
(03:47):
There’s another question when it comes to advertising. Where are the DFS Plus/2.0/flex companies going to fit into the equation as well? I know last year, when I would listen to NFL Radio broadcasts on Westwood One, you could not swing a microphone without hitting a PrizePicks ad. They were all over the place. I know that radio is a value proposition for advertising for a lot of companies. But that’s one that’ll add to it as well, in terms of how many companies are out there trying to make their wares known.
Matt Brown (04:20):
Yeah. The other thing that I’m at least minimally interested in, and I don’t know if we’re to that point quite yet. We still are fairly early in the game. I know us that follow this on a daily basis, it almost feels like we’ve been in this a long time. But I do wonder when, and more specifically from a DraftKings and FanDuel aspect than from the other books, when we start seeing some of these retention/reactivation offers coming out to some people out there.
(04:51):
I know you get the bonus bets when you log in and things like that. I’m talking more along the lines of, “Hey, re-up $1,000 and we’ll give you X.” Or, “Hey, we miss you. You’ve been gone,” whatever, stuff like that. Whether we actually start seeing that in actual advertising. Because the thing is, Adam, sure, maybe you log into the app after a long time and they greet you with the, “Oh, hey, we hadn’t seen you in a long time.” But if you’re never logging back into the app, if you’ve foregone going into DraftKings, or FanDuel, or something like that, reaching that person that used to be one of your customers, that used to be active and trying to figure out if there’s a way to get them back active or not.
(05:31):
Again, we might not be quite there yet. Maybe we’re still a couple years away from that. That certainly will be a thing at some point, because acquisition just naturally … Yes, there will always be people turning 21, and whatever. But naturally, acquisition will have to, at some point, at least somewhat take a little bit of a backseat to getting these people that you had at one point, and then don’t have any longer.
Adam Candee (05:55):
Well, the question is who are you telling your story to? I think you have a different situation if you’re someone who’s a privately held company versus a company that has to go to the market and tell a story about why you should believe in their growth plan. Because their growth can’t just be in terms of revenue. Obviously, that is the bottom line in the long run.
(06:14):
But anybody looking at you from a long-term perspective is going to say, “OK, great. You were able to squeeze more out of the customers that you had. But where are the new ones coming from? Are you going to be able to continue to squeeze from them at the same rate that you either did this quarter, or that you have over the last however many years?” I know I’m not really breaking a lot of new ground there. Just offering the devil’s advocate argument to the idea of are you going to focus more on retention.
(06:42):
Now that said, I do think that if you’re in the position of a DraftKings right now, you probably should be thinking in terms of retention with some of the PR hit that you took over the surcharge plan. I will tell you that I’ve heard from some people they have received at least some offers in their email that are not up to the level of $1,000.
Matt Brown (07:00):
Yeah.
Adam Candee (07:01):
But certainly like, “Hey, we’d love you to come back,” for 50 bucks, for 100 bucks.
Matt Brown (07:06):
Right.
Adam Candee (07:06):
Et cetera. That certainly is at least a step in that direction that will be interesting to watch. You, of course, as someone who has all of those accounts, you’ll be watching to see how many of those come in.
Matt Brown (07:18):
Yeah, absolutely. Then you brought up Fanatics. I think Fanatics is going to be fairly interesting, too. One, what kind of advertising are we going to see? How much are we going to see? What do they emphasize in their advertisements?
(07:33):
The one thing that we did talk about with Fanatics, Adam, is the fact that they do have something to offer a potential customer that the other ones, I’m not going to say don’t. Sure, DraftKings and FanDuel, if they wanted to, could buy a warehouse full of merch and give it away. But you get what I’m saying when I say it’s readily available, from the Fanatics’ standpoint of things. I do wonder, does a commercial every now and then, instead of always focusing on the bonuses or the no-sweat bets, and all the different things like that, going to the, “Hey, actually, come in, make a bet, and pick a jersey.” Or, “Hey, do this and get a hat,” or whatever it might be. If that’s actually going to be said in a commercial, as opposed to just a banner ad, and stuff like that.
(08:18):
That’s something I’m looking at too, because I’m curious if these people are going to try to lean more into the differentiation thing. As opposed to just the, “Hey, here’s $100. If you lose it, we’ll give it back to you in bonus bets.” Yeah, but everyone’s doing that. Can you do something that makes me compelled to sign up at your book or use you, because you’re a little bit different?
Adam Candee (08:42):
They have the story to tell. We know that they can do that. They have the deep-pocketed owner who can take chances. You have someone in Michael Rubin who you can sustain some losses to try to make this thing work. You have someone in Matt King who has done this before and understands the fact that he is working with a different brand than he has. Of course, it’s a brand with massive reach but it doesn’t have massive reach in terms of being a sportsbook.
(09:10):
I get that you want to be able to play in the same sandbox. However, Matt, I believe very much in what you just said, which is that Fanatics has the ability to differentiate in a way that nobody else does. They can appeal to different segments. And segments that clearly cross over.
(09:28):
Matt, you’ve been a guy into cards, and so on, and collectibles, and memorabilia. There’s such an enormous crossover in those segments that they could lean into harder. I don’t know if that’s really been done fully yet. I don’t know that they have the opportunity to do that when they’re trying to compete on product at the same time that they’re trying to compete with a differentiated offer. The product hasn’t quite been there yet.
(09:56):
But that’s not just unique to Fanatics. We’ve heard this about product when it comes to a number of sportsbooks playing catchup to DraftKings and FanDuel. Part of it, I think, has to be once you are making that pitch to people and saying, “You go to try our sportsbook,” well, it’s got to be ready. It’s got to be good to go.
(10:14):
When we get to the discussion on this podcast of ESPN Bet, that’s really where part of the issue is going to go. Is to say you’ve had a lot of chatter about how, even after the relaunch, after switching from Barstool to ESPN Bet, that the product just still really isn’t ready and isn’t where it needs to be. They have touted some improvements to that. We’re going to get the real proof in the pudding here, in the next few weeks. It’s one thing to say, “Come play with our product. It’s different, it’s better.” It’s another thing to actually prove it out with people.
Matt Brown (10:45):
Yeah. I think this is a perfect time to head into ESPN Bet, because I think we know what their strategy is going to be from a marketing standpoint. Because honestly, ESPN Bet has been marketed from day one since they launched it. It’s been integrated into certain programs. They renamed programs into ESPN Bet. You can’t watch a SportsCenter without endless … It’s not intrusive or whatever. But Erin Kate Dolan comes on and says, “Hey, come bet with me,” et cetera, et cetera. They’ve been advertising all along.
(11:17):
You can only imagine we’re going to see a little bit more of that as we head into football season within their various programs, and radio outlets, and things that they have that they can reach potential customers with, Adam. But at the end of the day, just like you said, where the rubber meets the road is going to be what is the customer experience like once you do get those people to try you out.
(11:35):
I think that there will be some people … I should not say unsophisticated, that is not the way to say it. But less savvy bettors that always don’t even really know what a good product is, and it’s just like, “Ah, whatever, I’ll take it. It is what it is.” But I do believe that all you really have to do is try out a second book. Certainly, if you try out three or four, you start to really realize though, the differences in these apps, and the differences in these menus. Wow, this actually just works faster, or this just works better. Or this has more options for me than this, et cetera, et cetera.
(12:07):
The more that we get people even trying a second book, the more we are going to start leaning more into what product means to a customer.
Adam Candee (12:18):
That has been really the point that we’ve been at here, in year six-and-a-half of this industry, for the last 12 to 18 months at least. You’ve seen MGM, and Caesars, and now ESPN try to talk about improved product. When the fact of the matter is, we know that from whether you use the Eilers rankings or whether you use your own eyes looking at these apps, that most of these books are trailing DraftKings and FanDuel on product, because DraftKings and FanDuel have been tech companies and have been working on a product for long before the rest of these companies did.
(12:51):
That is the real question for ESPN Bet. You mentioned a word in there, Matt, that’s key to it. Integration. But different than you talked about integration. How seamless can they make the experience from the media app to the betting app? Thus far, the response has been underwhelming. I know our friend Dustin Gouker has spent a lot of time looking at this, over on his Substack. And saying, “It just isn’t as seamless as it needs to be to really take advantage of this. It’s not as prominent within the app as it needs to be to get people’s attention.” Jay Snowden, the CEO of Penn Entertainment, said that this is something that they’re working on. That this is something that they need to have worked out by football season.
(13:34):
That’s the reason, ultimately, that this is the most fascinating story of the 2024 NFL season. Not only are we talking about whether or not Penn management survives this football season, based on whether or not they get some results. Because we’ve already seen activist investors talk about how they want to see results. They’ve seen billions of dollars of investment without seeing any results from Penn. The beginnings of the ESPN Bet returns have not been good for this company. Is Penn leadership going to survive this?
(14:08):
What is ESPN ultimately trying to get out of this deal? I think we have to also ask some questions of ESPN management. Because right now, if you said to me, “What does this mean to ESPN?” I would say not a lot, because of the way that they’ve handled this. You’re right. They’ve done the branding things. But I also think when you look at how ESPN has treated this, they seem pretty happy to take that money from Penn and just say, “Yeah, we have a betting product.” They’ve not gone after this with the fervor that I thought they would. Maybe they don’t want to.
Matt Brown (14:40):
Yeah.
Adam Candee (14:41):
Maybe it’s what we talked about all along. Maybe Disney is really not as all-in on this concept as we once thought that they were.
(14:48):
But, Matt, I’ll give you an example. Just from something that we were both watching last night. Both watching the US Open tennis last night, watching the Tiafoe-Dimitrov match. At one point, when they talked about how Tiafoe, and Taylor Fritz, and Emma Navarro, three Americans, had all moved into the semifinals. Chris Fowler, one of the voices of ESPN, said, “And all three were oddsmaker underdogs.” Oddsmaker. Not ESPN Bet underdogs.
Matt Brown (15:20):
Right.
Adam Candee (15:21):
Oddsmaker underdogs. Now is that because the USTA doesn’t want them talking about ESPN Bet? Because I’ve seen minimal integration, when it comes to betting and the US Open.
(15:32):
But that’s another problem that ESPN has to address. How comfortable are their rights (partners) working in the ESPN Bet product into what they do? If you can’t fully leverage that, you can’t fully leverage what ESPN Bet, we thought, could become based on the brand reach.
Matt Brown (15:49):
The other thing that I thought, and someone over at ESPN feel free, if you want to. It’s fine. You get this freebie on me.
(15:59):
But, Adam, one of the things I was interested in too was just we’re talking about crossover, an obvious crossover in things that we know. You go into the fantasy page. The two fantasy leagues that I’m still in, both run through ESPN. They have you a projection from a point total that’s listed next to your player as to what they’re going to score from a fantasy point standpoint. It’s not even intrusive. It actually might even be helpful if you added a column that showed what their receiving prop is right next to that. Then, oh, what do you know? That’s clickable, if you wanted to go bet that or something.
(16:37):
It seems so easy. It wouldn’t even be intrusive. It actually makes perfect sense in a fantasy app like that. It’s like, “Oh, CeeDee Lamb is projected at 78-and-a-half yards this week.” That’s something that no one would even blink an eye at because that makes perfect sense from an integration standpoint. There’s none of that on the fantasy site at all. Where I’m just going, “Guys, this seems like low-hanging fruit, no-brainer stuff right here,” with all of that. Yeah. No, you go, it just shows you the fantasy point projection. That’s all you get.
Adam Candee (17:10):
Well, I’ll add one to that, Matt, because I’m someone who uses the basic ESPN app for headlines, and often for scores as well. I go into the scores page, and I’m looking at a WNBA game. The game is listed out, and the three bets that are listed point spread, total, moneyline.
Matt Brown (17:31):
Yeah.
Adam Candee (17:32):
But what they did was they listed the favorite with the point spread, and the underdog first and only with the moneyline. It doesn’t make any sense to someone who is a bettor of any thought, that you wouldn’t either get both. You would either get both moneylines. Or that you would get the favorite moneyline also listed next to the favorite on the spread. It’s just things that you look and you say, “They didn’t take a lot of care in doing this.”
(18:07):
If you were talking about a product that was rushed out in 2018, right after the fall of PASPA, fine. That’s one thing.
Matt Brown (18:13):
Yeah.
Adam Candee (18:13):
But it’s another when you’ve had time to think about this, and you’ve had an opportunity to work on this. That’s not ESPN necessarily themselves. That’s whoever’s working on the integration. We know that they’ve brought in a new chief technology officer on the Penn side to work on this. But the question that you have to have is when are we going to see it? Because if we don’t see it now, in the next, oh, I don’t know, four days, then what does it matter?
(18:38):
Because if Penn and ESPN Bet don’t succeed in taking some market share … Remember, Jay Snowden talked about this being a product that he believed could take 15 to 20% market share. Well, you haven’t cracked 5 yet. You’re on the clock. I don’t know if you have time to work out these bugs if they don’t get fixed quickly.
(18:59):
I don’t know, Matt. Maybe we’re spending an outsized amount of time talking about someone trying to compete for the number three spot in this market.
Matt Brown (19:06):
Yeah.
Adam Candee (19:06):
I just think it’s still so shocking to both of us that ESPN waited this long to get into it, and then bought in with the company that had proven in the Barstool deal that it didn’t understand how to monetize a media brand. And frankly, still is not showing it knows how to monetize a media brand.
Matt Brown (19:25):
Yeah. Again, it seems like there are some low-hanging fruit stuff out there that certainly could be done. I would like to think fairly easily integrated, as far as that stuff goes.
(19:36):
All right, Adam, before we get out of here. We’re not going to do three each, we’ll just go with some bold predictions as we head into the NFL season. My first and foremost is going to be that the ad blitz actually isn’t going to be all that bad, but there are still going to be massive outrage about the amount of ads that people see. It’s going to feel like a lot, but it’s really only going to be like one from MGM, and then one from DraftKings, and then one from FanDuel, and then one from Caesars. It’s going to be like, “Oh my God, there’s so many.” But really, they’re all just buying one ad throughout the course of the whole thing.
(20:10):
When you take a step back, it’s like, “They’re all on level footing.” It’s not like everyone went absolutely insane. But everyone’s going to complain about it anyway. That’s at least one prediction from me.
Adam Candee (20:20):
OK. To that, the idea of that prediction, let’s remember that there are restrictions in place as to how many gambling ads there can be on any NFL broadcast. You might feel like you’re seeing a bunch, but there can only be so many.
Matt Brown (20:33):
Yeah.
Adam Candee (20:33):
And that hasn’t changed. If you feel that, I think you’re going to feel it because of the DFS companies. I think what you’re going to see is that, in addition to the exclusive and non-exclusive sportsbook partners of the NFL, of which there are three and seven respectively, you’re also going to have Underdog Fantasy. Whether it’s a company like Betr going out there and pitching more. Who knows if some of these social casinos will try to push more as well? I don’t know. We’ll find out as that goes on.
Which sports betting operators face the most important tests
(20:59):
In terms of what we’re going to see out of this particular NFL season, I want to see who is a clear number three. Because if we get to the point if where there’s a clear and obvious number three, then we can talk about, “Will this always just be DraftKings and FanDuel, FanDuel and DraftKings?” But as long as there’s still a fight for number three, and there’s no clear tier two operator, then we can’t have a real discussion about whether DraftKings and FanDuel will be challenged. Someone has to be a good enough number three in order to do that.
(21:33):
Who’s involved in that discussion? BetMGM, Caesars, Fanatics, 365, and theoretically ESPN would be in that talk as well. I personally think that BetMGM is pretty well-positioned, after the Angstrom acquisition, to be able to do this. Will they do it? Whole other question.
Matt Brown (21:52):
Yeah.
Adam Candee (21:52):
It’s a company that has needed some time to ramp up. But I will say this for BetMGM. Matt, you can probably weigh in on this as well. As we’ve seen them make improvements, they’ve all been clear improvements over time.
Matt Brown (22:05):
Yeah.
Adam Candee (22:05):
It has all been incremental steps forward, it’s just maybe been a little slower and a little clunkier than we expected.
Matt Brown (22:12):
Yeah. For me, personal experience, from the evolution of V1 to where we are today, they are by far the one that has done the most to try to make the experience much better for everybody.
(22:28):
One last thing for me is I do wonder, and this is a longer-term deal. If some of these other books try to lean into some contest stuff as well, we know the big Circa contest here in Las Vegas. I understand that doesn’t necessarily put direct dollars in Derek’s pocket over there because he doesn’t rake it, but we’re going to approach $12 million for this Circa Survivor contest, or whatever. Which is a lot of money that’s getting pumped in before the season ever even starts. It makes me wonder if some of these people don’t look up and go, “Hey, man, he’s getting a lot of people through the door and a lot of money going in.” If people don’t try to copycat something that has just been a massive, massive success.
(23:07):
Again, while he’s not personally pocketing that, maybe someone does decide to rake it. Maybe someone decides to do something like that, to where it would be a revenue driver. The success of those things, I think they’re bigger than you and I would have even imagined.
Adam Candee (23:20):
Yeah. The real question becomes a Wire Act question. It’s the same thing we talked about, the SuperContest, is can you do this across state lines? The only way we’ve seen it “attempted,” and I say attempted with big air quotes right now, is by these, I’m going to call them social sportsbook exchange products that are out there right now. That are trying to do this without going afoul of the Wire Act.
(23:44):
Will the bigger companies, like a DraftKings or a FanDuel, be willing to try that? You’re right, there’s a huge opportunity out there, in terms of money. But there is also a major regulatory question as well.
Matt Brown (23:55):
Guys, everything we talk about … Today, we just came in here, we wanted to give you a preview of what we’re looking for as we head into the season. But every time we talk about an article, I know you can find it over at legalsportsreport.com. Everything we do is absolutely free. Go ahead, hit that subscribe button. We do appreciate that as well, if you want to leave a five-star review, even better. Complaint department is Adam Candee. Yeah, just any complaints, you can send directly over to him. For Adam, I’m Matt. Talk to you guys next week.