Just when you thought fuboTV was out of sports betting, the company may instead be attempting to raise the stakes.
As a sports-centric live TV streaming service, the integration of sports betting onto Fubo’s platform always made sense. fuboTv launched its own sportsbook last year, but the betting features failed to attract the subscriber attention necessary to make them worthwhile, and the company pulled back on its gaming and wagering services in August.
According to CEO David Gandler, however, that doesn’t mean that Fubo has given up on the idea of integrated gaming within the service. Gandler spoke about the future of gambling on the platform during the company’s third-quarter earnings call last week after the streamer reported eclipsing 1.23 million subscribers. He noted that 90% of fuboTV’s customers watch sports, and that presents sports betting companies with a big opportunity.
“I’m extremely bullish on the integration of gaming and video,” he said. “So we are in discussions with, I would say, numerous books. These discussions, I would say, are pretty healthy. It’s a very competitive landscape on the gaming side.”
That’s a very different tone than the one Gandler struck in January, when he said that the sports betting market was “100% saturated, there is no loyalty.” At the time, Gandler was likely feeling burned by Fubo’s struggles with attracting customer attention to its gambling efforts. The time may be a bit riper now for those efforts to succeed.
For one thing, more and more media companies are integrating wagering into their content offerings. Amazon has partnered with DraftKings to offer odds and exclusive wagers for “Thursday Night Football” on Prime Video. NBC is teaming with BetMGM this season to integrate betting and fantasy content into “Football Night in America” broadcasts on NBC, and NBC’s regional sports network in Chicago is offering several “BetCast” sports-betting-themed alternative broadcast of Bulls games this year.
Executives at Fubo are no doubt noting these developments with an element of bitter satisfaction. After all, the streamer saw the potential in the space, even if its own sportsbook did not result in success. Gandler was insistent that Fubo can have better success when it re-focuses its gambling efforts in the future.
The company is now exploring partnerships similar to those that networks and streamers have recently announced. Whether it is with FanDuel, DraftKings, or a specific casino chain, because fuboTV had already been integrating its own sportsbook platform into its streaming programming, it should be a fairly easy change to bring a betting partner on board.
“I’m very upset about gaming in general because I do believe in the thesis,” he said. “The good news is that the technology is available and when we decide who that partner will be, we’ll continue to develop that product for third parties. It might initially start with one and maybe down the line … we might decide that it might be best to just create more of a market auction-type environment for gaming.”
Fubo did not completely pull back from the world of sports gambling this summer. The company came to an arrangement with SportsGrid to provide an over-the-top (OTT) platform dedicated to sports wagering on fuboTV, as part of their Sports Plus Add-on.
Fubo
Fubo is a live TV streaming service with about 90 top channels that start at $79.99 per month. This plan includes local channels, 25 of the top 35 cable channels, and regional sports networks (RSNs). In total, you should expect to pay about $91.99 per month, after adding in their RSN Fee. Fubo was previously known as “fuboTV.”