The Ireland-based gambling giant Flutter Entertainment is still keen on further expansion in the US after its merger with FanDuel took off as soon as the country lifted the federal ban on sports betting.
After the May 2018 ruling of the US Supreme Court changed the game once and for all by putting an end to the federal ban that effectively suspended sports betting in the majority of US states, Flutter Entertainment, then known as Paddy Power Betfair, announced a merger of its business in the US with the local sports betting and daily fantasy sports giant FanDuel.
For the time being, FanDuel has a number of risk trading teams based at three centres – Dublin, Jersey City, and Melbourne – that are aimed at maintaining a round-the-clock operation, with them tracking the market, adjusting odds accordingly, and making sure customers receive their winning bets quickly. Such scouts provide updates swiftly, sometimes even almost half a minute faster than the updates made by live television broadcasts.
The legal sports betting sector, which even barely existed in the US only a few years ago, is now expanding extremely fast. According to reports, more than $57 billion was placed as bets on commercial sportsbooks in the country in 2021, generating an overall revenue of $4.29 billion for local sports betting operators. Now, judging by the first half of the year, more records are set to be broken in 2022, as sports betting revenue worth $3.45 billion was registered in the first seven months, with the figure representing an almost 63% increase on the same period a year earlier.
Flutter Entertainment’s FanDuel Business Holds Significant Chunk of US Legal Sports Betting Market
For months, Flutter Entertainment had been working to acquire a company in the daily fantasy sports market, which allows punters to bet on a selection of players and their performance in real-life games. Unlike regular sports betting services, DFS betting was legally allowed in the US before the Supreme Court made its ruling in May 2018. At the time, the company’s management believed that owning a top DFS business would help it gain an early foothold in the legal sports betting market and even a large chunk of the growing market at a later stage.
As a result of these aspirations, the terms of Flutter Entertainment’s US business’ merger with FanDuel were broadly agreed on by the time the US Supreme Court’s ruling was announced on May 14th, 2018.
Currently, the US revenues account for about one-third of the company’s global gambling business and are expected to rise even more, to 50%. They already increased by 50% to $1.05 billion in the first six months of the year, with FanDuel claiming it held more than half of the online sports betting market in 15 states at the time.
With the increasing number of US states that are legalizing the new form of gambling, the rapid growth of the country’s sports betting industry shows little to no sign of slowing. The local partner of Flutter Entertainment – FanDuel – has an average of 2.2 million customers on a monthly basis, and this is even without the state of California, as local people are set to vote on sports betting legalization in November. According to preliminary projections, even if Californians do not back the addition of sports betting to the state’s legal gambling sector, the business is considered on the course of registering an annual profit in the following year.
Campaigners Share Growing Concerns Regarding Gambling-Related Harm
The elimination of the federal ban that had not permitted legal sports betting services in the US resulted in making betting on sports quite easy in the country. However, anti-gambling campaigners have shared their concern that the more relaxed rules for new forms of gambling would eventually lead to a massive increase in the number of gambling addicts, with a public health crisis on the way.
Some campaigners cited a sharp increase in the number of cases of problem gambling among punters between 18 and 23 years.
Still, industry leaders say that gambling operators are the ones who could put the industry in order, as they are unwilling to see the same restrictive policy on online gambling that has already been implemented in other countries, such as the UK. Still, they agree that addressing gambling addiction and gambling-related harm needs to be among the highest priorities of the legal gambling market in the US.
- Author
Olivia Cole
