Happy New Year, y’all!
It’s been two weeks since last we visited. The holiday season (mercifully) put a bit of a damper on the pace of sports betting news. That brief lull has pretty much subsided though.
There is much to talk about as 2019 begins, including another league-level partnership involving a gigantic gambling company.
Let’s get right to it.
2018 sports betting retrospective
The ticking-over of the calendar provides the perfect opportunity to reflect on a year gone by, both personally and professionally. Hashtag “resolutions,” you know?
As for the latter, 2018 was the busiest year of gambling news in the history of humankind. A brush fire that sparked in December 2017 grew into a full-roaring blaze following the US Supreme Court decision to repeal PASPA in May.
Over at TheLines, the intrepid Chops ran through his top 10 sports betting stories of 2018. Spoiler: the SCOTUS decision is No. 1. Haralabob makes an appearance, too.
The LSR staff also gathered around the fireplace with a tasty beverage to muse about our 2018 observations.
And a fearsome fivesome reflected on the whirlwind year during the first 2019 episode of TheLines Podcast. Click play and keep on reading.
Looking ahead to 2019 sports betting
That’s enough looking back, right? It’s a brand new year, and this one figures to be even more exciting and intriguing than its predecessor. That’s saying something.
Here are a couple of 2019 look-aheads from our friends and family:
- PlayNJ: What does the future hold for New Jersey online gambling?
- TheLines: 10 bold predictions for sports betting in 2019
And here on LSR, we covered the 2019 legislative landscape from stem to stern in a two-part series:
This week’s sports betting headlines
Caesars opened the new year with the week’s biggest news.
The casino giant is now an official partner to the NFL, the first such deal for the league. The alliance doesn’t include a sports betting component (yet), though that almost certainly was an ingredient in the discussions.
MGM previously entered into partnerships with three other US sports leagues — NBA, NHL and MLB — but the NFL chose a different path.
Caesars was also responsible for another major headline this week out of New York, a linchpin state and favorite to pass new sports betting law in 2019.
On Wednesday, it announced a partnership with the Oneida Indian Nation that will eventually spawn three retail sportsbooks. The Oneida casinos — Turning Stone, Yellow Brick Road and Point Place — are located in the central part of the state near Syracuse.
Both parties expect to roll out NY sports betting in 2019, but there is some legislative and regulatory work still to be done.
Takes and tidbits
Some other things happened that didn’t involve Caesars, too. Here are five of them:
- DraftKings adds more casino games, including slots, roulette and video poker, to its DraftKings Sportsbook app.
- Parx will enter the Pennsylvania sports betting market on Tuesday when it opens its retail sportsbook.
- How much revenue has PA gambling expansion generated for the Commonwealth to date? Joss Wood counts up to nearly $400 million.
- Never one to mince words, Martin Derbyshire argues there is only one role for the federal government in sports betting: Addressing the illegal market.
- Guest analyst Vincent Oliver is an expert in California gaming law, which makes him a handy person to have around these days. Oliver reports on the current climate for legalization in the nation’s most populous state.
There were also two significant hirings within the industry to begin the new year:
- Laila Mintas joins Bet.Works board of advisors as chairwoman.
- Gavin Isaacs joins SBTech as non-executive chairman.
That’s all we have, ladies and gents. Let’s meet back here around the same time next week and do it again, shall we?
Until then …
