New Jersey’s year-old sportsbook industry was arguably the US’s most competitive ever when the NFL’s 100th season kicks-off Thursday.
Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers, the League’s oldest clubs, were the first to get week 1 of 17 away. They did it on Thursday at Chicago’s famed Soldiers Field.
Of the League’s remaining 30 teams, 26 will play on Sunday, including reigning champions New England Patriots, and four on Monday.
And ready for this historic blast-off was a crowded field of NJ sportsbooks as competitive as never before.
A dramatic week leading up to the Packers-Bears confrontation will make sure of that. It saw three new sportsbooks with enormous potential go live in New Jersey. They bring to 16 the number of online sportsbooks now operating in the Garden State
One of the newbies is the latest addition to the Rupert Murdock publishing empire.
BetStars has been rebranded as FOX Bet
It’s called FOX Bet and it shouldn’t have too many start-up hiccups. A re-branding deal has seen it take over the licenses and tried and tested technology platform of BetStars.
Equally important, FOX Bet could well justify Fox Sport’s view that its first betting arm comes with a massive start-up advantage. This is its chance to harness the New Jersey masses among its millions of Fox sports news and TV fans.
Toronto-based theScore Bet, second of the three exciting newcomers, feels much the same way. It too is a media company. Through an internet service to its clients, it also supplies millions of American punters with invaluable sports news and stats.
It has linked this service with its sportsbook and together with a new $40m investment it also looks set to go places.
Bet365, last, but certainly not the least of the three, is not a media off-shoot. It’s a British betting colossus many see as being one of the most successful ever to set foot in America.
From the moment you open its very inviting website, you can see why it is as highly rated as it is.
Bet365 is professional but simple and easy to operate
It’s clearly a professional operation, yes, but it’s also simple and easy to operate. And it offers such a good betting and promotions agenda, it almost immediately makes you want to bet.
Since sportsbetting prohibition ended in May last year, some important things have happened in New Jersey.
To start with, the state was first out of its blocks in getting its would-be sportsbooks licensed and up and running. That was in June last year.
By June this year, it was already threatening to replace Nevada as the betting hub of North America. In the last three months, it has twice topped Nevada’s betting handle. This despite the glitter of Las Vegas and the fact that sports betting has never been banned in Nevada
During this time, FanDuel and DraftKings, two previously established NJ daily sports fantasy giants, were quickly able to charge into the lead. This was clearly because of the massive head-start given them by their multitude of New Jersey DSF users.
DraftKings went to the front first but were overhauled by FanDuel in mid-year. By year’s end, however, when the state’s 12-month total handle was over $3 billion, FanDuel was hugely dominant.
FanDuel brought in close to 50% of total bets last month
A subsidiary of UK gaming giant Paddy Power, it operates out of Meadowlands Race Track alongside competent rival PointsBet. It’s known, however, to have captured the bulk of the joint 50% in total NJ handle Meadowlands was credited within July
DraftKings has also stood head and shoulders above the rest but has been a distant second at about 25%.
Does the entry of FOX Bet, theScore Bet, and Bet365, into New Jersey, pose a major threat to this dominance?
Right now that might just be as big a question as ‘can Tom Brady and the Patriots win yet another Super Bowl?’
It is certainly an intriguing one as the NFL’s 100th season kicks-off and heads for Super Bowl LVI.
