FanDuel group plans TV entertainment
News on 28 Jul 2018
News on 28 Jul 2018
The new FanDuel sports betting group, comprising merged operational assets from Paddy Poker Betfair, FanDuel, Betfair US, DRAFT, and TVG, with a presence across 45 states and 8 million customers, has announced ambitious plans to create sports betting TV shows to coincide with the opening of gambling parlours in casinos and racetracks across the country.
Matt King, FanDuel’s chief executive officer, told the Bloomberg business news agency that the programs will be added to the company’s TVG and TVG2 cable networks, which are currently devoted to horse racing, as well as to digital channels the company operates.
“We are going to be investing heavily in content,” King revealed. “There’s a lot of different formats we can distribute through and a lot of different channels.”
The Group is seeking an edge in an increasingly competitive US sports betting market following the US Supreme Court’s recent striking down of the restrictive Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which has liberalised a market worth over a hundred billion dollars annually.
The liberalisation, still barely two months old, has seen major gambling firms racing to enter the market, often in partnerships with European betting companies that have more technology and experience.
A number of states beyond New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Nevada, which have already passed sports betting legislation, are moving in the same direction.
UK gambling giants like Paddy Power and William Hill plc, operating through US subsidiaries, are active in partnership with US companies.
FanDuel Group was among the first to open sportsbook operations following liberalisation, launching a FanDuel-branded sports book at the Meadowlands Racetrack in New Jersey. CEO King told Bloomberg that he was very happy with initial results, which he said generated turnover of $3.5 million in just nine days.
FanDuel has signed agreements to operate sports betting facilities at Tioga Downs in New York, and the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia (see previous reports).
King has not released the detail on the TV show project yet, but he has hinted that content will be general sports betting in nature with a rich and diverse content.
