Investor forum predicts US$7b sports betting market by 2025

Investors and sports betting companies are running up the score when it comes to sports betting, predicting the fast-growing industry will be a US$7-billion to US$8-billion business in the United States within five years.

But not all the many companies flocking to get in on the ground floor will make it, they predict.

Panellists at the NYC Sports Betting Investor Summit said Monday that the industry is growing quickly in this country a year and a half after New Jersey won a US Supreme Court ruling clearing the way for all 50 states to offer legal sports betting.

So far, 14 do, and many others are considering joining the market.

Investment firm Morgan Stanley predicts the American market will generate almost US$7 billion in revenue by 2025, up from US$833 million this year. That’s up from an estimate of US$5 billion the company had issued less than a year ago.

That amount would represent less than 20% of the US$41.7 billion won by commercial casinos in the US in 2018. Still, it represents a substantial new revenue stream that, for legal operators, did not exist a year and a half ago.

At the investors’ event sponsored by Morgan Stanley, executives from MGM Resorts, Hard Rock and Mohegan Sun all issued similar predictions in the US$6-Billion to US$8-billion range. And the research firm Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, which tracks sports betting regulation and revenue, said those figures are “very close” to its own estimates of future market size.

Participants at the forum cautioned that while the industry is growing quickly, the high cost of acquiring customers and promoting a new business could lead to some current operators failing.

“It’s war out there,” said Seth Young, chief information officer for PointsBet. “At the end of the day, there’s going to be a lot of carcasses out there on the road.”

“It is a growing market here in terms of revenue, but it’s a very tough market,” added Scott Butera, president of interacting gaming for MGM Resorts International. “Everybody wants to be here Ultimately, I think we’ll see some shaking out.”

Nonetheless, Butera said he believes US sports betting will exceed even the increased figures cited at Monday’s forum.

“I’ll take the over US$8 billion,” he said.

Morgan Stanley gave a high-end bullish estimate that sports betting could generate US$15 billion in revenue by 2025 if every state in the nation has legalised it by then. Its worst-case estimate is a US$2.5-billion market, with only 22 states participating.

Panellists predicted as many as 10 new operators may soon join the market.

Operators continue to spend heavily to attract new customers, who, in turn, still must jump through several hurdles to deposit funds in their accounts, as many major credit cards will not finance gambling transactions. Kresmir Spajic, senior vice-president of online gaming and sports betting for Hard Rock International, said 80 per cent of sports betting transactions in Europe are financed using credit cards, compared with about 30 per cent in the United States.

AP