Hello and welcome to this week’s Igaming Focus newsletter:
- Product continues to be the key factor in U.S. sports betting success.
- Industry specialists provide further context on ESPN Bet, as 2025 season could see strong improvements for BetMGM.
- Rocky mountain hop: Bet365 to expand U.S. head office in Colorado.
- NFL week three: BetMGM improves handle share, but margins lag.
- News shorts: DraftKings’ SEC fine, Oddschecker, Fanatics-White Hat, Bodog.
Breaking news: The rest is politics #2
Ban lifted: Financial exchange operator Kalshi has been cleared to offer bets on the U.S. presidential elections just five weeks before voting day. On Wednesday a three-judge panel at a federal appeals court in Washington lifted a temporary ban on the company offering the markets and rejected an emergency call from U.S. financial regulators to stop it trading.
- PM dawn: In a statement, Kalshi chief executive Tarek Mansour said: “This week is the dawn of a new era for financial markets” and his company would soon expand its range of political betting markets.
- Public danger: The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission had claimed political bets would endanger the integrity of elections in the U.S., but the judges said it had failed to show how the public would suffer from betting on the markets.
- Judge Patricia Millett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said: “The problem is that the Commission has given this court no concrete basis to conclude that event contracts would likely be a vehicle for such harms.”
- Piling in: The ruling opens the U.S. to political betting, and brokerage giant Interactive Brokers also announced it will be launching its own range of political betting markets.

Shutterstock
Superior product gives Flutter key advantage
Flutter Entertainment’s existing product and tech to continue driving company growth and lead over competitors, say analysts
Product lead supports $21bn forecast: Flutter Entertainment’s 2027 revenues forecast of $21bn was the focus of much of the company’s investor day coverage. But the importance of product in U.S. online sports betting was another key point in explaining why the FanDuel parent company is leading the market and why, along with DraftKings, it benefits from a deep structural advantage in this key domain.
- Personalize this: Providing its take on the investor day, the JMP team commented that “personalization will lead the way” and “from a product standpoint, FanDuel’s time advantage and ties to a global footprint have been a differentiator and a reason for market share outperformance in recent years.”
- It’s a revolution: The company is currently testing a new feature that allows bettors to create bets with interactive pricing in real time, which JMP said “will be revolutionary.”
- Give’em what they want: The concept is ready and “opens the door to allow bettors to control what they want, when they want it, drilling into the concept of personalization,” added JMP.
- Why it matters: The product will make “FanDuel the all-in-one sports betting experience, a key competitive moat in the online gaming industry,” JMP said, with players able to access any bet, from game outcome to player props or live betting.
- Are you experienced? As well as being complementary to fantasy sports leagues, “the execution speaks to the data and experience behind the engineers and traders of Flutter,” added the analysts.
Great expectations
With regard to the revenue targets, JMP said it is usually skeptical of multi-year targets “as more often than not, expectations are not met.” Flutter’s story however was more convincing, given its track record and management belief “that it can generate $5bn+ of EBITDA in the next several years,” which would mean even more upside on the shares for a stock that is “+115% in the last two years vs. the Russell 3000 +53%.”
- Market figures: Flutter also upgraded its North America total addressable market estimate to $70bn ($63bn US + $7bn Canada) by 2030 and the team at Jefferies noted that having exceeded the previous 12% structural gross gaming revenue margin target for several quarters, Flutter raised its hold target to 15% by 2027.
- However, the enhanced TAM would likely depend on major regulatory advances in either California, Texas or Florida, which are far from certain.
- Key products to drive GGR and promo spend: Still, the “market-leading GGR margin” should provide “headroom for market-leading promotional generosity at 4% of handle,” which is underpinned and enabled by FanDuel’s “favorable mix of higher-margin products, with >70% bets parlays, >25% in-play and >50% player props,” added Jefferies.
- JMP added that the $21bn target seemed achievable with near-term growth drivers including M&A in Brazil and Italy, U.K. consolidation, and “U.S. guidance that only incorporates legacy states.”

ESPN (courtesy)
ESPN Bet’s options and BetMGM’s Angstrom proposition
Following up on the CDC Gaming feature on ESPN Bet during last week’s SBC Summit in Lisbon, Portugal – Matt Howard, partner at Propus Partners, and Marc Thomas, chief executive of Algosport, provided their insights on the company as it enters a key period.
Early days: Both commented that the brand awareness ESPN brings to the table means it is too early to write it off as a potential major player in U.S. sport betting. However, following early launch-related buzz, “product and marketing now come to the forefront,” said Howard, and “consistently good marketing messages alongside incremental regular product improvements can grow the share.”
- Thomas added that ESPN Bet is facing “an uphill battle” and with the FanDuel and DraftKings duopoly so dominant in some states, “a host of large operators are unlikely to (ever) hit double digits anytime soon.”
- Delivery via M&A: On the product front, ESPN can catch up thanks to owning its tech stack as it has more options “to improve and innovate than outsourcing,” said Howard. But “it won’t happen overnight” and only if its products are well-built, “use third parties or even acquire them.”
- In that spirit, Thomas noted that “even a small inefficiency for DraftKings can translate into loss of market share” and its acquisitions of Simplebet and SportsIQ should be seen in that light. But “if DraftKings gets the integrations of these businesses right, I can see them supercharging their product roadmap,” he added.
- Angst relief for BetMGM: When it comes to challengers to DraftKings and FanDuel, Thomas said the product and trading improvements Angstrom could deliver to BetMGM mean it probably “has the best chance of challenging the established two big players.”
- Final frontier: On that note, JMP issued a note on Tuesday highlighting in-play betting as sports betting’s “next frontier. With “legalization slowing materially, the drumbeats for in-play are getting more pronounced,” with further M&A activity in that field likely.
- During last week’s SBC Summit, industry contacts mentioned that providers like nVenue, Kero Sports and Huddle had been very busy with B2B deals since DrafKings’ acquisition of Simplebet and in its note the JMP team also mentioned them as potential takeover targets.
Further reading: CDC Gaming highlighted DraftKings’ plans to focus on live betting in April.

Bet365’s Ohio website
Bet365 to cement U.S. presence in the Rockies
Beat the watershed: Bet365 has opened its new U.S. headquarters in Denver, Colorado, and is set to hire up to 1,000 new employees in the next few years. A spokesperson for the group told Covers.com that its new “U.S. headquarters in beautiful downtown Denver represents a watershed moment in bet365’s North American journey.”
- Bet365 is active in 11 states currently and has around 50 people working out of its Denver office. It has plans to hire more than 300 employees this year and has had an eight-year, $14m tax credit approved by the Colorado Economic Development Commission that could help it hire nearly 1,000 employees eventually.
- Last month the brand became the first-ever official sports betting partner of the UEFA Champions League and, having invested in North America since 2021, is steadily expanding its operations as it looks to close the gap to enter the top five or six mobile sportsbooks in the U.S.
Further reading: On Tuesday U.K. newspaper The Guardian ran a profile of Bet365 founder and chief executive Denise Coates.
NFL week three update
Macquarie said hold levels for the U.S. sports betting market were 8.6% from September 23-29 during week three of the NFL season, with football reaching 8.3%, and other sports 9%.
- New York reported hold in line at 9.1% for the week prior, but even though NY handle has grown 18% year-on-year so far this season, this was “a deceleration from the 2024 average growth of +25% YoY,” which Macquarie said was due to tougher comps.
- Underdog boost: JMP said positive sport outcomes for operators continued, with “long-shot underdogs (5.5+ points) now 14-2, including 10 outright wins.”
- “This is notable given bettors will often add favorites to multi-leg parlays, implying gaming margins had another solid week,” JMP added.
- Fantasy reality: Fantasy betting continued to show resilience in acquiring new customers, with downloads at +29% in week three and +46% since the start of the season.
- Weekly standouts: Jefferies said FanDuel and BetMGM were standout performers in week three. FanDuel handle and GGR were up 10% and +30% YoY with margins at 11%, while BetMGM showed “encouraging signs, with handle growing +42% YoY,” even though margins continue to lag at just 5% vs. industry average of 11.8%.
News shorts
DraftKings has paid a penalty of $200,000 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for selectively disclosing non-public information on social media rather than to all investors. The company boasted of its “strong growth” on its X and LinkedIn accounts back in July before the release of Q2 results.
Oddschecker’s parent company FairPlay Sports Media brand has launched oddschecker+, a US-first subscription service that will provide betting and insight tools to bettors. New services will include an AI-powered tool called Positive Value Bets and Public Betting Splits, showing subscribers the weight of money on sporting events and the type of bettor taking certain positions.
Offshore bookmaker Bodog has exited the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, although the reasons for the move were not immediately clear.
Fanatics Betting and Gaming has integrated a range of White Hat Studios’ games into its new online Fanatics Casino aimed at its Michigan and Pennsylvania customers.