After a strange 12 months for the budding U.S. sports betting industry, during which the most popular event with bettors swung from Russian Liga Pro ping-pong to the Super Bowl, some clear trends are finally starting to emerge.
It is no surprise that the biggest homegrown sports have seen the most action, but it seems there is also a real international interest from American bettors, and operators are now taking wagers on a wide variety of global sports.
Simon Noy, head of trading at Kambi, is ideally placed to assess the market trends of the past 12 months. Kambi, a supplier of on-property and online sports betting technology and services, is live in 13 states and works with operators including Rush Street Interactive, Penn National Gaming, Parx Casino, and Churchill Downs.
Noy said, “Commensurate with the most popular overall sports in the U.S., the most popular leagues by number of bets are understandably the likes of the NFL, MLB, and NBA. Leagues including the UFC and PGA Tour were also among the most popular for U.S. bettors in 2020, alongside ATP and WTA tennis, highlighting the diverse sporting appetites of U.S. bettors.”
While professional and college football, basketball, and baseball were the most popular sports among bettors as a proportion of all wagers placed, the three sports did fall slightly in 2020 compared to the previous year.
“There are a number of factors at play here, not least of which being pandemic-enforced suspensions to the calendars of major sports in 2020,” explained Noy. “This certainly gave traditionally more niche sports such as darts, MMA, and in particular table tennis their turn in the limelight, with table tennis being the sixth most popular sport on our U.S. network in 2020, over the likes of boxing and ice hockey.
“There was certainly an element of pent-up demand as major sports returned in 2020. By way of example, when the PGA Tour returned in June the number of actives was up more than tenfold compared to before the pandemic.”
Brandon Walker, Head of Amelco USA, has observed similar player trends as the market matures. One of the first suppliers of sportsbook platform technology to be licensed in New Jersey where it was involved in Stars Group’s launch of what is now Fox Bet, Amelco is live in six states and counts BetWildwood (Colorado), Action247 (Tennessee), and WynnBET (Michigan) among its customers.
“What we’ve seen is quite a bit of interest in golf. It is a huge sport in the U.S. and in terms of the betting opportunity, the in-play and in-game betting will definitely grow because golf tournaments are non-stop for four days,” Walker said. “MMA as well. UFC has grown into a major international brand with some huge names among the athletes, and that is driving an uplift in betting.”
Kambi works with betting operators on six continents making soccer one of their core products and Noy has also observed some pick-up among U.S. bettors, although interest has not been limited to overseas leagues.
“The EPL is the most popular soccer league with U.S. bettors, but that is not to say that players with Kambi’s U.S. partners neglect other competitions,” he said. “MLS drove more engagement in 2020 than both the Champions League and Italian Serie A, underlining the league’s growing popularity.”
Amelco’s Walker offered further insight on an event that may prove popular with patriotic punters. He explained, “We’ve got the Olympics around the corner and, if the Tokyo games do take place, it opens up a lot of new betting opportunities for people. We all know the U.S. is massive at the Olympics, and Team USA will have athletes across every sport.”
The reason why some sports have been bigger hits than others with bettors is not simply about the size of their long-term fan bases or how quickly they returned to action after last year’s interruption. In the wake of PASPA being struck down, a number of sports organizations were quick to spot the potential of betting as a tool to drive audience engagement and have built mutually beneficial relationships with stakeholders across the industry.
The PGA Tour is perhaps the best example of this. Importantly, it has established an integrity framework with Genius Sports and joined the American Gaming Association’s Have A Game Plan® responsible gambling initiative. On the commercial side, it has agreed on a global partnership with IMG ARENA to license its official live-scoring data to operators, and signed BetMGM, DraftKings, FanDuel, and PointsBet as official betting partners.
Scott Warfield, the PGA Tour’s VP of Gaming, explained that while football, baseball, and basketball had the benefit of a huge number of fans primed and ready for the arrival of legal betting, other sports have had to work harder. He said, “The PGA Tour, UFC, NASCAR, MLS, and others were not exactly starting from scratch. But we certainly needed to spend our time educating and entertaining the core fan and casual bettor on how you would bet on golf and why you would bet on golf.”
For the PGA Tour that process has involved developing a range of innovative content to connect with fans during the build-up to tournaments and keeping them engaged throughout four days of action. It now has odds integrations on Tour-owned platforms, while a partnership with The Action Network has resulted in the GolfBet brand and associated weekly live-streamed show The Gimme. The Tour also experimented with a second-screen betting experience when it teamed up with PointsBet and NBC to trial a live betcast on Peacock Premium for two and a half hours a day during February’s Waste Management Phoenix Open.
“The whole reason we're in this space is engagement,” said Warfield. “We see it as an opportunity to get our fans to watch an extra 30 or 45 minutes at an extra five or six events a year, and to take interest on a Thursday morning or a Sunday afternoon a couple of holes in. And then, we also think it's an entry point for a newer casual fan.”