FanDuel, DraftKings prepare for gambling rise

Sportsbooks and daily fantasy operators are preparing for a Summer Olympics bump.

The games in Paris, set to start July 26, will be the first to take place since legal gambling became widespread in the U.S. The gaming industry expects an increase in wagering from the previous Summer Games in Tokyo, particularly for sports like men’s and women’s basketball, soccer and tennis.

“The Olympics and gambling, for decades, have looked at each other from afar. This year we’ll see them meld together,” said Max Bichsel, North America executive vice president at Gambling.com Group, a digital marketing company for the global online gambling industry.

These Olympic Games come at an opportune time for sportsbooks, during the offseasons of high-volume betting leagues like the NFL and NBA. But it remains to be seen whether they move the needle for gambling operators.

The effect could be more muted for giants FanDuel and DraftKings, which together hold about 80% of the U.S. online gambling market share, than for smaller players.

“If you want to look at this from an annual perspective for a company like DraftKings or FanDuel, it’s still going to have a relatively minor impact,” said Jordan Bender, a senior equity analyst at Citizens JMP. “Obviously positive, but it’s not going to be as big as we might think and a lot of it is going to be largely dependent on viewership.”

A representative of FanDuel, which is owned by Flutter, said the Olympics likely won’t move the needle much for the sportsbook. DraftKings didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Even so, the expected rise in Olympics gambling underscores just how much the market has boomed in recent years.

More than 30 states now allow some form of sports wagering, and many of them permit mobile and online betting, a dramatic increase from the last Summer Olympics.

The Tokyo Olympics came just a few years after the Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for legal betting across the U.S. In 2021, 97 million American adults were able to place a bet, compared with the 164 million American adults that will be able to wager this year, according to the American Gaming Association.

“Sports bettors are looking for something to bet on and incremental events are going to help,” Bender said. “The hard-core gambler, someone betting week in and week out on the NFL, NBA, NHL … that’s where a lot of the money is still going to be made.”

Still, the Olympics may not cause the betting surge seen with other sports in the U.S. Some state regulations may prevent betting on many events, and users may only be able to wager on medal competitions.

Viewership for the Olympics in the U.S. has suffered in recent years, particularly due to the difficult time difference in Tokyo in 2021 and Beijing in 2022 (the home to the Winter Games), as well as…