FanDuel, Caesars, DraftKings Partner With NFL
In mid-April, multiple leading American sports betting companies revealed that they had struck partnerships with the country’s national football league. Each company struck multi-year partnerships with the NFL, and received the title of Official Sports Betting Partner. DraftKings and FanDuel have consistently been at the top of the heap when it comes to the growing landscape of American sports betting, but Caesars is a less-popular option. Why Caesars and not the ever-expanding WynnBET or BetMGM?
Three of the US’s leading sports betting providers have struck exclusive partnerships with the NFL. ?QuinceCreative/Pixabay
The Partnerships: Official Sports Betting Partners Announced
In mid-April, America’s National Football League announced that it had three new Official Sports Betting Partners: DraftKings, FanDuel, and Caesars. As part of the arrangement, each company would have multi-year collaborative contracts with the NFL, as well as exclusive access to certain branded content and new free NFL-themed games.
The partnership also means that each company will be able to integrate their content to affiliated NFL tech programs, like the NFL app and the NFL’s official website. All three sportsbooks will be able to use official NFL data for their sportsbook feed, allowing players exclusive accurate statistics to place their wagers.
Where The Partnerships Diverge
Generally speaking, all three sportsbooks will receive equal access to NFL data, and the partnerships broadly mean the same thing. On certain finer points, however, DraftKings and FanDuel will share the same access, while a slightly different approach is being taken for Caesars.
For DraftKings and FanDuel, players will be able to take advantage of beloved NFL footage, like all-time highlights and Next Gen Stats. Caesars will not have access to this exact same range of material, though a press release has clarified that the company will still be able to share unique NFL content with its users.
DraftKings is already the Official Daily Fantasy Partner for the NFL, meaning that the other companies striking this deal will not be able to use NFL intellectual property or mars for fantasy football. This includes an exclusive integration with the NFL’s RedZone channel, wherein DraftKings receives significant advertising.
Integrating Sports Content And Sports Betting
This final element of the partnership — wherein users of these online sportsbooks will be able not only to receive information about the most practical or lucrative bets to make, but will also be able to engage in the NFL’s world-famous sports entertainment — integrates sports betting and the spectatorship of sports themselves.
In this way, the deal is not wholly unlike a recent partnership struck between Topgolf and BetMGM. Topgolf Entertainment is known for its popular online golf game, which will now have integrated BetMGM advertisements. In this way, sports betting becomes subsumed into a larger universe of sports-related entertainment, likely reaching a broader audience.
A Preexisting Relationship For Caesars And NFL
In a press release about the partnership, it was clarified that Caesars and the NFL have already established a relationship. Prior to this deal, Caesars Entertainment was the Official Casino Sponsor of the National Football League, a title that the company will maintain even as it becomes an NFL Official Sports Betting Partner.
Because of this relationship, Caesars will retain certain additional privileges that the other two companies do not have. For example, Caesars can use the NFL logo across its retail casino locations, including any affiliated musicians, entertainment options, and celebrity chefs. Caesars will also be affiliated with the 2022 NFL Draft and the 2022 Pro Bowl.
FanDuel: The Newest Addition
Of the three companies, FanDuel is the only one just reaching an arrangement with the NFL for the first time. To accommodate the company and offer unique advantages there, the NFL and FanDuel have established that users of FanDuel will be able to access post-game and in-game highlights on FanDuel’s fantasy sports and sports betting sites.
FanDuel CEO Emphasizes Significant Role Of NFL; Cites Super Bowl
In a statement about the partnership, FanDuel CEO Matt King referenced the extreme popularity of the Super Bowl when it came to placing online sports bets as a means of emphasizing the great appetite for football-related content to FanDuel users — and sports bettors, broadly.
In fact, Super Bowl Sunday 2021 proved to be so successful for American sports betting sites that several of the nation’s most popular sportsbooks crashed due to unprecedented, and unforeseen, traffic, including DraftKings and FanDuel. Barstool Sportsbook and BetMGM also crashed during the annual football event.
The crashes came despite the fact that news sites anticipated a sports betting surge nationwide. A pre-Super Bowl report for CNBC predicted that half of Americans — about 116.5 million people — would place wagers on the early 2021 event, which came before widespread vaccination was readily available in the US.
American Sports Betting Continues To Soar
The deal between FanDuel, Caesars, and DraftKings emphasizes an ongoing trend in the US accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic: the popularity of sports betting, which has softened the blow of pandemic-related losses experienced by the nation’s gambling industry.
In early 2021, the American Gaming Association revealed its numbers for 2020, demonstrating that sports betting and online gaming were the two sectors of the industry that experienced exponential growth in the first year of the pandemic. Sports betting surged to its highest revenue ever, earning $1.5 billion in 2020.
