Business By The Books: Betfred Exits Another Sports Betting Market


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Betfred announced last week that it is leaving the Virginia sports betting market as of Oct. 21.

The sportsbook stopped accepting bets and users last Tuesday. Bets for markets and events that pay out after Oct. 21 were settled “based on a fair market value as an early cash out” on Wednesday.

The VA sports betting exit is the latest for Betfred, which has been pulling out of states throughout the year. Betfred had operations in 10 states: eight mobile, plus Nevada and Washington in-person.

Now, Betfred is only live for mobile in Iowa and Pennsylvania under the Wind Creek Bethlehem brand, along with the two retail betting states.

Sports betting speakers at G2E

All of the gaming industry’s eyes fall on Las Vegas this week when G2E kicks off Monday.

Sports betting will be front and center to start off Wednesday. DraftKings CEO Jason Robins and Circa‘s Derek Stevens join moderator Rachel Nichols to talk about the current state of sports betting and what’s next.

That chat begins at 9 am in the expo hall.

Sports betting exchange adds investor

Sporttrade announced Friday that Susquehanna is a strategic investor.

SIGSports Analytics provided “substantial growth capital” through two investments starting in 2023. The group is also working to “enhance Sporttrade’s key markets by providing additional liquidity and improved pricing to high volume markets across a variety of sports and contract types in the coming months.”

Funding is also being used for state expansion and customer acquisition. Sporttrade is live in four states and plans to launch in Virginia this month, although its signature exchange product remains live only in New Jersey.

Sportradar adds microbet options

Sportradar will add nVenue‘s live micro-betting markets to its Unified Odds Feed.

The markets from nVenue are delivered in real-time to offer “an unrivaled volume of new live betting markets to operators with sub-second latency.”

MLB, NBA, NFL and NASCAR are the first sports to go live. More sports will launch in 2025.

Genius adds to board

Genius Sports appointed Robbie Bach to its board of directors Wednesday.

Bach is a former Chief Xbox Officer and president of entertainment and devices for Microsoft. He helped launch the original Xbox in 2001, the Xbox Live online gaming service in 2002, and the Xbox 360 in 2005.

“I know his proven expertise in driving consumer-focused innovation in the technology and entertainment industries will be an invaluable asset,” Genius CEO Mark Locke said. “This level of insight and expertise will undoubtedly help accelerate our efforts to revolutionize how sports content is understood, consumed, and experienced globally.”

Genius also hired Mark Kropf as chief technology officer. He was a technical director in the CTO office at Google, experience that will “be pivotal” for expanded deployment of the GeniusIQ data and AI platform.

Fantasy sports coalition, idPair partner

Member companies of the Coalition for Fantasy Sports will start the first national self-exclusion program in the US with their new idPair partnership.

Fantasy sports players with coalition members can choose to simultaneously exclude across all platforms, or as many as they would like, according to Friday’s release.

There are four members of the coalition:

PrizePicks moves CFO to new role

Ari Koteles, the CFO of PrizePicks since 2021, is moving to the newly created position of chief business officer, according to a Thursday release.

Replacing Koteles is Marcus Sanford, the former CFO of Blizzard Entertainment.

Koteles will be responsible for “aligning business strategies with market opportunities, overseeing business development, managing partnerships, and ensuring the integration of business functions to drive growth and profitability,” according to the release.

Photo by Shutterstock/Jaromir Chalabala