SBJ Betting: TheScore Bet ups the ante at Canadian Open

Coming off a wildly creative, successful promotion in which it used a crane to dangle a suite 100-feet above the 18th hole at last year’s Canadian Open  -- offering complimentary food and beverages to guests who had to be strapped into their seats -- theScore Bet headed into its planning for the 2023 event on a quest for a suitable follow-up.

"We took you to the air and gave you a unique vantage point of the tournament, but how do we get you even closer?” said Aubrey Levy, SVP/content and marketing for theScore Bet. “Well, what if we actually figured out a way to get you to play in some capacity?"

The Toronto-based sportsbook plans to deliver that experience next week when it offers patrons at the PGA Tour event the chance to play a 150-yard Par 3 hole constructed near the tournament’s admissions gate, an experience that will include a clubhouse, caddie, swing coach, leaderboard and a daily C$1,000 (US$745) closest-to-the-pin prize.

Any ticket holder age 19+ can sign up for “Hole Zero” tee times at two stations that theScore Bet set up on the course. Ball tracking tech will allow entrants to create videos of their shots. There’s a C$75,000 (US$55,875) prize for the first hole-in-one. TheScore Bet also will operate a Members Lounge hospitality are for customers along the ninth hole fairway.

The first-of-its-kind promotion was made possible by the quirky layout at Oakdale Golf & Country Club. The club, when not hosting a Tour event, operates as an amalgam of three nine-hole loops. Among nine unused holes was one near the tournament entry gates that could play as a par 3, with enough room around it to construct a temporary clubhouse and areas for guests to work with a swing coach before teeing off.

“That (location) is part of why it was such an awesome opportunity,” Levy said. “The foot traffic and visibility for it is fantastic. The signage and brand impressions we’ll get off that will be great and it will also flow (people) into the experience.”

By setting tee times, theScore Bet will avoid creating a hassle for gluts of fans waiting to meet with a swing coach or step to the tee box. Instead, they’ll sign up for time slots at activation areas around the course, returning to meet a shuttle to take them to the hole at the time they selected. “The intention is for this to be a pretty premium experience,” Levy said. “You’ll come in, experience the clubhouse, have some F&B, talk to our swing coach and talk to your caddie before you take the shot. It’s going to be a pretty good (amount of) time to get through a par 3. It should be a leisurely, fun experience.”

Interestingly, theScore Bet did not restrict access to its current customers or require guests signing up to open a betting account -- though there will be brand ambassadors on hand to help those who do. “Part of the thinking for us is that if this is somebody’s first touch with our brand -- which hopefully it is not at this point -- does this satisfy and service the brand the way we want it to,” Levy said. “It’s just intended to be a premium brand experience. If we’ve connected with you on that, we’ve done our job.”

PointsBet Chief Strategy Officer Eric Foote has left the soon-to-be-sold U.S. unit of the Australia-based sportsbook to start a consultancy that will advise sports rightsholders and media entities on sports betting matters.

Foote, who worked in digital media for 15 years before joining PointsBet for its U.S. launch in 2020, plans to marry those two experiences to help leagues,

While at PointsBet, Foote led a commercial team that struck deals with all the major U.S. leagues, a half dozen teams, several college programs and a roster of retired players such as Drew Brees and Allen Iverson. He also struck a transformation deal that added NBCUniversal as a 4.9% equity investor, bringing the PointsBet brand to "Sunday Night Football" and exposing it on RSNs in several key legalized states, including Illinois.

More recently, he worked on the company’s U.S. M&A strategy, including the acquisition of Banach Technology, the securing of a $65 million investment from Susquehanna International Group and an eventual agreement to sell to Fanatics for $150 million .

“There’s such an opportunity here in what is still very much an unknown space,” said Foote, is relocating with his family to Maui this summer. “I want to help people understand and navigate this space on everything from licensing, regulation and compliance, to data distribution, to sponsorship and sponsorship activation and even market access. Not the top three or four, but the remainder of the leagues are really still trying to understand the space and navigate it. I think with my background both in media and gaming and my relationships, it’s a nice fit.”

Foote pointed to the likely unraveling of team deals with RSNs as an opportunity for a re-set of legacy rights packages that did not contemplate sportsbook operators’ interest in acquiring rights to air games on their apps, or the additional revenue that the networks could gain from integrating sportsbooks into broadcasts.

Most of the leading sportsbooks are willing to pay to stream games in near real-time on their apps, allowing bettors to watch while placing live wagers. Caesars struck a deal to stream "Sunday Night Football" in its app beginning in December. FanDuel has rights to stream MLB’s free game of the day in its app.

The high cost of rights make it unlikely that sportsbooks can compete for a larger slice of the broadcasts packages of the major North American leagues. But Foote thinks it’s an opportunity for mid-sized and smaller properties to generate revenue from their streaming rights.

“We’re seeing already what FanDuel is doing, DraftKings is doing and PointsBet is doing with live rights,” he said. “All of the operators are in-market, trying to find live content for their watch-and-bet capabilities, because we all know that someone ... is roughly five times more likely to bet on an event in-play if you have the live content with low latency next to the markets. That alone tells the value of what those rights can be for that operator.”

Foote also sees opportunities working with recently spun up digital outlets, venture capital firms searching for the right play and tribes in states that have not yet legalized online wagering, such as Minnesota and Wisconsin. “If I can bring an incremental dollar to that team or league or media company or VC firm or tribe, that’s my goal,” Foote said. “Everyone thinks there’s a pot of gold at the end of the road. But it has to be done right. And the well has dried up a bit in the past year.”

The opening of online wagering in two states that figure to reside among the top 10 in handle nudged U.S. handle share even farther in the favor of the established leaders in Q1 of 2023.

Regulator filings in a dozen states that break out handle by individual operators show FanDuel taking 38% of the $19.7 billion wagered from January through March in those states, which combined for 65% of U.S. handle. DraftKings had 32%. BetMGM had 9%, Caesars had 8%, Barstool and BetRivers had 4% and PointsBet had 2%.

FanDuel picked up four points on the share it held in 2022 while DraftKings added three points. BetMGM, Rivers and PointsBet each lost a point. Caesars lost two. Barstool was even with its 2022 share.

With the Super Bowl, March Madness and a deep January of college and pro sports schedules, Q1 brings the highest volume of betting of any quarter in the U.S.

Strong starts in Maryland, Ohio and Massachusetts -- where sportsbooks began taking online bets in November, January and March, respectively -- accounted for some of the swing toward the top two sportsbooks. In March, FanDuel had online handle shares of 54% in Maryland, 35% in Ohio and 33% in Massachusetts. DraftKings had shares of 36%, 32% and 47% in those three states.

Caesars was at 6%, 5% and 3% in the new states. PointsBet, which pulled back much of its marketing while negotiating the sale of its U.S. business to Fanatics, was at 1% in Maryland and Ohio. It pulled its license application in Massachusetts shortly before the state launched.

With all but four states reporting April results, handle for the month is on pace to fall 19% from March, which would match the decline from March to April of last year. The March Madness boom gives way to the spring and summer swoon. Rinse and repeat.

Far more interesting is a continued year-on-year decline in a handful of states as neighboring states that now allow online wagering claw back residents who were crossing borders at this time last year.

The reversal of the flow across bridges and through tunnels continues in New Jersey, where April was down 10% from the previous April. That’s the 11th consecutive month in which monthly handle was down 8% or more compared to the prior year. In six of those months it was down 14% or more.

Michigan dropped 15% -- it’s third consecutive double-digit year-on-year drop and fourth straight declining month since neighbor Ohio opened. Another Ohio border state, Indiana, was down 11% from last April. D.C., which has now seen both Maryland and Virginia open, was down 26% from last April. The opening of Massachusetts led to April falls of 11% in New Hampshire and 7% in Rhode Island.

First-mover advantage was a thing. But apparently not a sustainable thing.

NOTE : Regulators in Illinois, Colorado, Arizona and Delaware have not yet reported April results.

• Legalized sports gambling starting next year in North Carolina "now seems a better bet as the state House’s top leader said Thursday he expected his chamber would accept alterations to its own proposal made by the Senate," notes the AP.

• Columbus, Ohio, had two new online sportsbooks -- Columbus Blue Jackets Fanatics and Muirfield Village Golf Club Parx Interactive -- reporting in April with handles of $431,708 and $1.12 million, respectively, notes the Columbus Business First.

• Three Proskauer attorneys penned an op-ed for SBJ under the header, "Everything in moderation appears to apply even to sports betting ad regulations."

• FanDuel took home Best in Sports Betting honors at last week's Sports Business Awards (the first time SBJ has given out the award). "For us it’s trying to get as many engines firing at once," said John Griffin, FanDuel SVP/sports commercial, who accepted the award for the company.