The streaming brand’s sports betting service went live this week in Iowa combining mobile wagering with live streaming TV.
There’s a lot of talk out there about “the future of sports betting.” It’s mainly predicated on where betting kiosks might pop up, what sorts of markets might be offered to the public, and the general growth of the mammoth industry.
If you want to talk about sheer innovation, you should look no further than the Fubo Sportsbook. They’ve taken what FOX has done — leveraging distribution to create and market an in-house sportsbook — to another level.
This week, they went live in Iowa, their very first state, allowing consumers to place bets as they watch live action all integrated within Fubo’s platform and technology.
For those unfamiliar, Fubo is an online streaming service that started in 2015 and competes with the likes of Sling, YouTube TV, and Hulu + Live TV. They began as a platform that would live-stream an extensive array of soccer matches and expanded into a truly sports-first platform which would go on to expand and offer a more diverse channel lineup.
By launching a sportsbook, Fubo is able to deliver sports fans a unique experience, allowing them to connect their mobile wagering app to their streaming experience. So, if you’re watching a baseball game, your sportsbook app will show you in-game lines.
“It’s unlike other media experiences where you might have a broadcast that’s displaying a sportsbook’s lines or products to actually make a wager, where you then leave that environment and go to the sportsbook to make a wager,” Scott Butera, president of Fubo Gaming, told Boardroom. “With Fubo, because we’re all one entity and one integrated product, we can have a complete kind of synchronization.”
Not only will the consumer be able to bet in-game on something they’re watching; the wagering app will show new odds each time a user changes channels.
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With that, Fubo is able to gather so much data about user behavior and use it to create a unique sportsbook experience tailored to you.
“On our TV side, our customers watch over 140 hours of TV a month, so we get to learn a lot more about you than just sports,” says Butera. “In the casino business, it’s really all about how well you know your customer, really knowing your customer, knowing their families, knowing their habits, when they like to go to bed… by having that 140 hours, we can really understand our customers in ways that others can’t, which should make us much more efficient in terms of marketing.”
It’s an intriguing strategy, and one that most other books cannot employ. With that in mind, gauging the response to Fubo Sportsbook’s user-tailored promotions as opposed to the broader offers made by the entirety of the industry.
Will Fubo Sportsbook change the way sports are wagered on? It’s certainly possible. The product speaks to the disconnect between what people are wagering on and what they can see on television. By streaming the very sports that are being bet on, Fubo can help guide its users to precisely what they want to see, ensuring both viewership and loyalty through this key differentiation.
They may only be live in one state, but Fubo Sportsbook’s angle here is a unique one — and with it comes serious potential for growth.
There’s a saying in Iowa that if you build it, they will come. So it’s only fitting that Fubo’s new service made its debut in the state that gave us Field of Dreams with grand designs on taking an empty space and creating something spirited.
