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A daily podcast delving into the biggest stories of the day throughout the sports betting and igaming sector.
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Media is top of mind in the US sports betting industry this week, and for once it isn't a debate about whether or not commercials are bad for society. Instead, we're going to discuss some big deals that involve one group giving up on a major investment while another group steps in to give it a go. We're going to talk the new Fandle Sports Network and the latest buzz from the affiliate space involving XL Media and Sport Radar on today's episode of iGaming Daily. iGaming Daily is brought to you by OptiMove, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming market. I am Jessica Wellman, editor of SBC Americas, joined by media manager Charlie Horner. Charlie, do you watch, have you ever watched really baseball, hockey, NBA? These are not your sports. These aren't my sports, no. I watch quite a bit of field hockey, amateur field hockey at the weekend, but not ice hockey, no. I mean, are there, I mean, this is such a dumb question, but like how many sports channels are there in the UK? So there's free-to-air sports on the BBC, ITV, but then there's Sky Sports who's sort of more cable and then TNT sports. And then there's a few sort of streaming platforms, but I can imagine not as much as there is in the US. We have so many sports channel packages. When I had cable, which is more recently than most, you get... Like the sports package is like 50 channels. Every every college conference has its own channel and that sort of thing. And that brings me to kind of laying the groundwork before we dive in on what is going to become Fandle Sports Network, which will be a group of they get called RSN's regional sport networks, which are essentially platforms for. games of sport that revolve around a specific region. For me, I get what was Ballysport, Ohio. And that channel has Cincinnati Reds games, Cleveland Cavaliers games, who am I forgetting? Columbus Blue Jackets, the hockey team. And so various teams that are all related to that region. And that's how you watch them. But even that is potentially changing because Diamond Sports, the group that owns this chunk of stations, has been in a bit of a pickle lately. Can't really pay the bills. And as a result, I mean, maybe they look to Europe. A lot of these teams are like, I'm leaving. I'm going to do it myself. So we have the deal announced. What does it entail? for FanDuel, what are they getting out of this? Well, they're going to get, I think it's the naming rights for 18 TV networks. Yeah, Ballet Sports will become, I guess, FanDuel Sports Network, Ohio, FanDuel Sports Network, Florida, etc., etc. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, they're getting all of that extra sort of brand visibility in those sort of regional areas. And I'd imagine that because those are regional properties, though the audiences are very loyal to those because they've got the local audience. So I think FanDuel are really trying to connect a little bit more with those local betters and sports fans really. Yeah, you know, they already have TVG, which they had rebranded to FanDuel TV. Just a reminder, TVG used to be just a cable station that only showed horse races. I think they've expanded the scope of that. They have, you know, up in Adams with K Adams and some other content to make it a little more sports differentiated in addition to ponies. But that was, you know, a national one. It was like niche kind of sports. These are good sports. These are sports that fans, if you want, if I want to watch the Reds, I have to have access to this channel. and that's the way that you're gonna get it. You may get a couple games here and there on Apple TV or ESPN, but by and large, you have to have access to this in order to see them, which does mean like on a hyper local level, not hyper local, but on a local level, you're gonna benefit from this. Now we don't know the price, so I'm gonna speculate just a little bit here, and you can tell me if I'm way off on this. So we know that the 10-year deal with Bally's was expected to generate about 88 million in naming rights, profits for them. As we've seen across the board, team partnerships, access deals, all of the value of these has been generally going down. You are in a bind where you have filed for bankruptcy and you need somebody to come in and save you and help you. you've lost a lot of value in some of these teams leaving that I'm going to assume the price was lower than that. Seems reasonable or? Yeah, I think you're absolutely spot on with that. I mean, given the Diamond Sports financial position that we have reported on quite extensively over the last 12 to 18 months, yeah, I think it's safe to say that Fanjul had a fairly strong negotiating position when they were looking at doing this deal. Now This stuck out to me. Um, diamond will also profit from quote certain media and advertising spending commitment. So you're paying the base fee, which is you're going to have Fandle Mike's Fandle bug in the corner, Fandle things. When you looked at Bali sports and keep in mind, I worked at Bali's for a little while, so I had to watch a lot of Bali sports. A lot of the content was not. Just not valleys. It was other competitors. For example, they had a flagship Or not a flag, but they had a show every day that was sponsored by bed mgm and bed mgm was all over it um Other operators were involved all over the network with the you know fan duel play of the day draft kings Whatever of the day you had these teams that had deals with other um sports books, so I would think Fandual having a little more money to spend than Bally's did, you might get closer to exclusivity than you were on the Bally's setup of things. This extra media advertising and spending commitments might be to take over some of these betting shows and things that were previously with other competitors. That's well. likely to be extremely valuable to FanDuel because it's not just about getting the brand out there and in the faces of people, but it's actually getting the app onto the devices of the players and getting those offers and promos into those players' baskets. I guess this or the previous Bally's deal mirrors what ESPN bet are experiencing in Yeah, they have ESPN integrations into ESPN broadcasts, but ESPN also takes ads from competitor sports books and for ballies for ESPN, they're not realizing the full potential of that media integration that you could get. Whereas Fanjule have probably looked at it and thought, well, actually, if we can... spend a little bit extra to get that near exclusivity, then it's going to be much more valuable to us as a sportsbook operator. Absolutely. Well, the other thing too is, keep in mind that Bally's only went into its 11th state last week. Fandals in just about every state. So you couldn't even fully realize the value of Ballybet because most of the RSNs that you had... were not even where BallyBet was available. And I think this is a criticism of Bally's that lots of people have made, which is that they just, they lit some money on fire. They acquired Monkey Knife Fight for, it was like 300 million or some huge, let me fact check that the next time you talk. They acquired Monkey Knife Fight for a huge amount of money. They acquired Betworks for a huge amount of money. They did this giant diamond sports deal. They did team deals. They had a deal with the Nashville Predators. The 11th state that they went into last week was Tennessee. So they had a deal with a team for years in a state where they weren't even launched. Yeah, that's- So it's like, I think, you know, we'll get to this question, I guess, now, because- Bally's, unless you had something to add, Bally's clearly didn't make the most of this. Why do we think Fandool can? But if you have another thought, go ahead. No, no. I think what you're talking about really does amplify that there were some sort of inefficiencies on the Bally's deal. And I think the Monkey Knife fight deal was about $90 million. Still not a tiny bit of change. Well, wow. I got a bad, where did I get that number from? I'm crazy, you're right, it is $90 million. Apologies, fake news. Yeah, so I think in terms of what success would look like for Fanjul, I think it is just getting the brand out in front of as many sports fans as possible. Obviously you want to see a little bit of an uptick in terms of maybe first time depositors and getting new people to sign up to the app. incredibly competitive race against DraftKings in a lot of these states. They want to be number one. A lot of this will just be about marketing and getting the brand in people's faces and trying undertake something like this. I think it makes sense from a brand positioning perspective that It's almost, you know, Fandle's trying to be ESPN. You know, this is just the place where fans go for sports, whether it be to bet, whether it be to watch, whether it be to do DFS, whether it be to hang out with Gronk while he is in a live dealer studio, and that they're trying to make themselves a more well-rounded brand than just, this is where you go to sports bet. And I think for that reason, it is very interesting to me and I like the move. I think success too is just, like you said, brand awareness. I'm gonna go back to Bally's for one more second. Bally's is a brand that people don't, does it have name recognition? Yes. Do people know what it is? Not really. In the United States, we had a situation where up until, Two years ago, there was a Caesars Casino on the strip in Las Vegas named Bally's that was not owned by Bally's. There was at one point, Bally's had gyms in the East Coast, Bally's Sport Club. Originally, it was a pinball machine company. There's a competing brand with the same name, not competing, but there's a brand with the same name that sells fine leather goods that I think Bally's is a name just never really. You don't know what it means. Fandool, they very clearly established that we are a brand for fans. It's literally in the name. And they lean into that fan service with the kinds of people that they do deals with and the fact that they're going down this media route. All right. I think we've got a lot to see on how this moves forward. Obviously, we will continue covering this on SBC Americas. We're going to take a quick break and. come back to discuss what's going on in the affiliate world. And I hate to warn you, it's going to be a lot less fun than this one was. All right. Welcome back to iGaming Daily. We are going to talk. Now we had a deal this week that is good for some people. It generated some money. Sport Radar is acquiring the remaining assets of Excel media for a deal that can be worth up to $30 million for those unfamiliar, Excel media and affiliate The portfolio for North America, Crossing Broad is the biggest site, but there's also Sports Budding Dime, Saturday Down South, a couple others, and lots of things to look at here, starting with why is XL Media kind of throwing in the towel on this one? Yeah, well, XL Media, again, just to set the scene a little bit, London Stock Exchange others when the US opportunity started to present itself, came over, set up its shop and looked to capitalize on the rapidly expanding US sports betting scene, getting on the iGaming sector as well. And for a few years, everything was rosy around the pandemic. I remember the pandemic when things were glorious. Yeah, it's the complete inverse of everyone else. But yeah, states were launching, left, right and centre as states looked to sort of balance the books a little bit. Sports betting was increasing and the last couple of years haven't been so successful on the state legalisation front which has resulted in adverse market conditions. I think Excel Media has labeled it on several occasions over the last couple of years. So there's less room for growth. It's a competitive space. And I think Excel Media have looked at it and thought there isn't as much value in this as we hoped or necessarily thought to start off with. Yeah. And they had... Earlier this year, they had ditched their European and Canadian assets to just go all in on North America, which is not, they're not the only ones to have done this. And then going all in on North America kind of backfired. It's such a tough spot to be in. You're right. There was just a gold rush for a long time. New states opening up just meant a flood of people and there was plenty of room for everyone to prosper. And now we're reaching the point where, okay, we've got all of the people that knew this was coming and wanted to be involved. So how do we access the rest of the country? When I was interviewing Jeremy Levine from Underdog, he pointed out like you've got, I think it's like 6% of the population on regulated betting accounts. So it's not that there's not people out there. It's that affiliates haven't cracked. how to get to them, traditional affiliates that is. Why would Sport Radar think that it's worth it for them to get into this game? Yeah, this is really interesting and it was a bit of an eye-opener when the news dropped in our inboxes earlier this week. I think for Sport Radar, they obviously, well-known sports tech, data supplier they have. odds feeds and all this kind of thing. They also have a marketing division, a marketing solutions product called Ads. I think that the Excel media, US assets acquisition is going to integrate within the ads solution in some way. SportRadar are very big on utilizing data, lots of analytics, trying to work AI into that. I think the they will believe that they can use their models and data and the way that they process all of that information and use it to their advantage and be a real big player on the affiliate scene. But it's an exciting new player onto the market. Yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head that sport radar has a lot going for it that traditional affiliates don't. They've done partnerships. They actually did one with Excel Media a couple of years ago that were going to use data to create widgets, real time game, act, representations, that sort of thing. I think everyone is realizing you have to be more robust than a pure search play at this point in time to be an affiliate and tools and data, especially for American sports butters are exactly how you keep people coming back. And so with that, I think they're right where they need to be in terms of they've got a lot of really good information that they can do a lot with. They've got a lot of good tech. I would also add, they also know what to do with data. I know affiliates know what to do with data as well, but you take a company like Sport Radar and you get data on the people that are coming through to you. And I think what they have in their technology... portfolio is probably going to be more beneficial in terms of determining how to find more people like that. I was just going to add that they already have long established relationships with operators as well. They're probably providing some marketing solutions in there with the sort of league rights and all of the data and odds feeds that they provide. And adding a way of getting new players into the mix as well. nice addition to what they're already offering. They're not the only supplier to get into this game recently either. As part of the buyback of Betting Hero from Fans Unite, J-Maw and the team over there turned to GeoComply and GeoComply is investing into Betting Hero, which is an unusual affiliate in that they are literal boots on the ground kind of people they send people to games and other activations to help people through the process of signing people up because it can be a little tricky sometimes. And it has been one of the more successful affiliates out there, I think, because they're going to where people are versus expecting people to come to you. And for GeoComply, just like you said, with Sport Radar, they work with everybody, basically. Not quite, I mean, a few operators, but... There's value in being a one-stop shop for people, I think, on the supplier side, in terms of what you can offer. GeoComply has fraud protection services, geolocation services, and now can help you with customer acquisition and retention as well. So if you can do all those things with one, why would you then go set up three different relationships with some other groups? Absolutely. I think I absolutely agree. with everything you said there. It's very nice for operators not to have to have lots of different contracts with lots of different suppliers, I guess. And some of these suppliers are picking up on that. Yeah. All right. Last question, because we are kind of running out of time. Yesterday, Katina Media announced they were laying off what we believe is about 10% of their workforce. And like Excel Media, they've gone all in on North America and said... we need to streamline, we really need to focus on content optimization, our AI projects, etc. What do we think about the future of North American affiliates? Is it something that people can bounce back from or is this the canary in the coal mine that this is just an industry that we may be vastly overestimated the value of? North America as well. I think way over 80% of its revenues is coming from North America now. These kind of cuts, it's never nice, but I think it does go to show that the North American dream, as it once was, is not as lucrative as people first thought. Does that mean that affiliates can't bounce back from it? I don't think so. I think, as you mentioned earlier, Jess, I think about 6%. of the population with regulated sports books. There's definitely a lot of opportunity if you can get it right, if you can reach those players. The big question is for affiliates is how do you get there? And whoever does manage to reach those players is going to be, well, very lucrative. Lauren Ruffin We talked about it on a panel in Lisbon that I will be writing up for the next This isn't, I think it's a couple, you know, the state's not expanding certainly doesn't help. Here's the other thing though, like, the internet is changing. Younger people don't, I Google everything. But some people, my nephew searches for YouTube. Like if he wants an answer, he goes to YouTube, people search social media, Reddit, Discords. The ways that we go about finding information is fundamentally changing. And I think that is really the thing to remember in terms of, I think there's, like you said, there's plenty of fruit out there. The low hanging fruit is gone, but the fruit is still there. You just have to, as I would say with that in here, you gotta figure out a way to go to where those people are instead of focusing on getting them to come to you. All right, with that, we are completely out of time, but. Check out what's going on with these stories on SBC Americas and other sites within the SBC network, and be sure to tune in tomorrow for another great episode of iGaming Daily.