Team USA’s FIFA World Cup run coming to an end in the Round of 16 was a huge help to sportsbooks, and not just in instant revenue.
Key Takeaways
- The World Cup and the USA’s run have greatly helped sports betting operators’ new customer acquisition.
- Gaming professor says sportsbooks will use World Cup data to plan NFL marketing strategy.
- What impact will the World Cup have on upcoming NFL betting projections for this season?
Yes, over 80% of the money at multiple operators was on the U.S. team to beat Belgium and advance to the quarterfinals, so the house cleaned up. And yes, the home-soil team was also the biggest liability in futures markets.
Caesars Sportsbook said it would’ve taken a massive loss had Team USA pulled off the incredible and won the World Cup after opening at +6,000. Those long and heavily bet World Cup odds were shortened to as low as +2,500 after the U.S. team won its group and beat Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Round of 32.
Falling 4-1 after a terrible performance against Belgium left fans and bettors with a sour taste in their mouths about U.S. soccer. Meanwhile, sports betting operators are left counting a large number of new customers, many of whom might still be betting on World Cup games.
U.S. betting activity was up 18 percentage points above the country’s normal level of first-time depositors, according to a report from Optimove.
“For sportsbooks, this confirms that World Cup-driven growth is wide, but not yet fully proven,” the report said. “The next challenge is converting this larger audience into more frequent, consistent, and higher-value players.”
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Preparing for fall
That’s exactly what U.S. sportsbooks intend to do.
More than $3 billion is projected to be wagered on this tournament, nearly as much as March Madness, across 39 legal sports betting states. The World Cup has set new soccer betting records nearly every match at this point.
The USA set a new mark every time they played, including the game against Belgium. BetMGM generated a higher handle for that match than any NBA, NHL, NCAA tournament, or college football contest (except the national title game) over the last year, setting sportsbooks up for what could be a massive fall season.
“This is gearing people up for the NFL season, which is, of course, the Christmas of sportsbooks,” Matt Bakowicz, the Director of Sports Management Program at American University’s Kogod School of Business, recently told Covers. “It is the prime time. It's when the most money is wagered over a long period of time.
“What (the World Cup) is doing is getting people attracted to betting on games, being involved in games, being involved in bonuses.”
The American Gaming Association estimated that last year’s NFL season would generate $30 billion in wagers. It will be interesting to see what those projections look like coming off of a highly popular betting event like the World Cup.
Winning over time
Operators are certainly hoping all of that customer acquisition and recreational betting carries over this fall. It’s why sportsbooks weren’t too upset when the American team won three World Cup games and received the bulk of the action and money over the last few weeks.
Even if the U.S. team had done the unthinkable and won the tournament, Bakowicz said sportsbooks would’ve taken a massive loss and survived because so many casual and new bettors would be flush with cash just in time for football season.
“If anything is logical in sports betting, you keep playing over time, very few people end up winning,” said Bakowicz, a gaming industry professor.
Paying off in green
It’s also why, Bakowicz says, FanDuel and DraftKings, the two U.S. market-share leaders, spent a combined $1.26 billion in advertising last year to help attract bettors for the World Cup.
It’s going to pay off in spades, or well, green for operators. Bakowicz says that at the end of the World Cup on July 19, sportsbooks will spend the next month analyzing all their World Cup data and identifying ways to reach this newfound betting base.
“Who are our top players, who can we send marketing ads to, who can we send information to? The amount of bonuses, pop-ups, instant notifications, comeback bonuses, come get involved with this, is going to be huge,” Bakowicz said. “They're going to have a bigger and wider population to cast a net over from a marketing strategy to get them involved in the NFL.”
