Delaware lawmakers Sunday did not take up a bill that would have expanded the state’s regulated sports betting market. The First State remains one of the few with single-operator markets.
Though the industry, by and large, continues supporting competitive markets with as many available licenses as possible, corporate realities have made this a decreasing priority.
Monopoly fears steadily dissipate
In June 2018, Delaware accepted the first legal single-game sports bet outside Nevada. Though the bet kicked off the expansion of sports betting that within six years led to regulated sportsbook offerings in 38 states, Delaware’s regulatory structure set off alarms in the gaming industry.
The Delaware sports betting market was set up as a de facto monopoly under the purview of the state lottery. The original in-person only sportsbooks gave way to online betting, now managed by Rush Street Interactive’s BetRivers, but Delaware has remained a single-operator market.
Unsurprisingly, this has drawn the ire of sportsbooks looking for greater market access. Sports betting stakeholders lobbied heavily against the low or single-operator lottery markets, largely successfully. Only six jurisdictions – Washington, D.C., Delaware, New Hampshire, Oregon, Montana, and Rhode Island – approved lottery-run markets. Florida, the nation’s only other single-operator market, runs its sports betting platform via the state’s Seminole Tribe, not the lottery.
Besides Florida, no single-operator market has launched since 2020.
That figure will decline after D.C. launches its competitive market later this year. It may be years – if ever – to see the remaining monopolies expand, but it now seems unlikely any future jurisdiction considering legalization will enact such an approach.
Access structure no longer as important
The sports betting industry's competitive market push between 2018 and 2022 led multiple states to permit several dozen operators. In 2024, few states will need double-digit licenses.
The U.S. market has increasingly consolidated around a handful of operators. Nationally, FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM and Caesars have an estimated 75-80% market share. DraftKings and FanDuel alone account for roughly two-thirds of the national share.
A score of operators with high hopes – and millions of dollars – invested in sports betting have since shuttered. This includes major gaming companies such as Churchill Downs (TwinSpires) and Wynn (WynnBet) that, after initial flurries, have shut down their sportsbooks.
Penn Entertainment, the operator of the nation’s largest portfolio of gaming properties, rebranded its Barstool Sportsbook as ESPN BET. After several billion dollars in investments, it’s still trailing the four market leaders in U.S. market share as well as Hard Rock.
Six years after the Supreme Court ruling that permitted sports betting outside Nevada, only a few other operators have shown staying power.
bet365, one of Europe’s leading operators, has steadily maintained mid-single-digit national market share without the millions in advertising spent by its competitors. Fanatics Sportsbook acquired PointsBet and has spent heavily as it tries to capitalize on its success as one of America’s most prominent sporting goods retailers. BetRivers, a rumored acquisition target, has also managed to remain among the top 10 in U.S. market share. A few smaller companies such as Circa are also live in multiple states, but they don’t have the national ambitions of many of the aforementioned companies.
Otherwise, few entities are willing – or financially able – to continue in the U.S. Washington, D.C.’s new competitive structure allows up to seven operators but it may not be able to fill all those spots. Massachusetts, one of the most coveted sports betting markets leading up to its 2023 launch, now only has seven operators.
Missouri voters could approve the nation’s newest legal sports betting market via a ballot measure this fall. The industry-backed proposal would allow several dozen sportsbooks to potentially enter the state. It appears most of those licenses will go unused.
