According to a November 11 report by Jefferies Equity Research analyst James Wheatcroft, BetMGM had a halcyon month of sports-betting handle during October 2024, unsurpassed since March 2022. It followed that with a best-ever week of handle during the first seven days of November.
That was among the highlights of British-based Wheatcroft’s Remembrance Day investor note, which largely focused on margin erosion in online sports betting. The report was prompted, in part, by DraftKings’s recent complaint that it was coming off “the most customer-friendly stretch of NFL sport outcomes we have ever seen.”
That trend of football scores put a $175 million dent in DraftKings’s revenue projections for the remainder of 2024. Wheatcroft wrote that October’s revenue margins decreased for DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM to the extent that they represented revenue slippages of 20 percent, nine percent, and 12 percent, respectively.
“The picture changes slightly when the first week of November is also included, though FanDuel remains the relative winner,” Wheatcroft continued. He calculated that early November outcomes diminished DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM revenues by, in order, 27 percent, 10 percent, and 39 percent.
“While BetMGM thus appears the worst hit by weak sports margins in 4Q to date, its underlying trends are far more encouraging,” the analyst noted. He then pointed to the record-setting handle as a beacon of hope.
Turning to FanDuel, Wheatcroft pegged its third-quarter revenue growth at 43 percent, led by OSB (51 percent) and trailed by igaming (39 percent). FanDuel parent Flutter Entertainment reports third-quarter revenues and cash flow on November 12.
With OSB in Missouri having narrowly passed last week, Wheatcroft projected a 2025 launch in the midsummer or late-summer months, in time for the next NFL season. Noting Missouri’s population that’s similar to Maryland’s, the Jefferies analyst observed that Maryland is a $500 million-per-year market for OSB.
He also commented not unfavorably on Missouri’s voter-approved, 10 percent tax rate for OSB, “implying a single-digit rate on a GGR basis, one of the lowest rates observed across the market.” Wheatcroft contrasted this with Illinois’s 40 percent top impost, which had caused “widespread investor concern around higher tax contagion.”
