How Promotions Boost Pennsylvania's Sports Betting Revenue

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00:00All right, so the state of Pennsylvania is a very popular sports betting state, probably

00:07top five, I would say, based in the U.S. as far as revenue is concerned.

00:11And partially, I guess, Jim, the reason it can be attributed to that, and I guess it

00:14is working, is all the promotional dollars that the sportsbooks are spending.

00:19And boy, when I looked at the number here over at Legal Sports Report, it sure seems

00:23like a pretty high one to get the revenue going, isn't it?

00:26Yeah, and you're absolutely right, Craig.

00:28Pennsylvania is one of the larger U.S. sports betting markets.

00:33And what struck me in their July report was just how much, collectively, the online sportsbooks

00:40spent on promotions, free bets, bonus bets, odd boosts, you know, that seems to go by

00:47a variety of different names these days.

00:49But they spent $14.2 million on free bets in July, which was nearly double from July

00:58of last year.

00:59And I thought that was interesting because typically, like we've talked about over the

01:02last couple of weeks or months, Craig, we typically see a low in sports betting overall

01:08across the country in June and July.

01:11The sports betting events, if you will, are not as prominent as they are when we get into

01:18the fall when you have NFL, NHL, NBA coming back.

01:24So, you know, it was a bit surprising to see that the promotional spending was as high

01:31as it was.

01:32FanDuel, $5.7 million in free bets, DraftKings, $2.3 million, Bet365, just shy of $2 million.

01:41And you know, I can see it for Bet365, they just launched in the Pennsylvania market not

01:48that long ago.

01:49So they're still in that sort of growth phase there and trying to acquire customers.

01:55So I can see them spending.

01:57It did only account for $3.5 million of total handle for the month in July, which landed

02:03at $414.7 million.

02:08Handle was up over 20 percent, revenue was up over 34 percent year over year in Pennsylvania.

02:14So as we're seeing across the country in a lot of markets, just the overall growth

02:20is there.

02:21Just that promotional spending just kind of jumped off the page at me.

02:25Perhaps they're trying to get a jump on the customer acquisition for the NFL season, correct?