Sports have taken a significant drift in just about every aspect. How to watch it, how to follow it, how good athletes are getting, etc. Everything is drastically changing, especially with what’s going on with COVID-19. Now, since no sports are going on right now, there’s no way to watch your favorite team and no way to bet on them as well. Before this coronavirus pandemic started, legal sports gambling was on the rise, no question about it. The legal books, like DraftKings, FanDuel, MGM, etc. were making a remarkable amount of revenue every day.
DraftKings sports book started on August 1, 2018. Relatively new, but after a year and a half after, a lot of individuals hopped on board. As long as sports gambling was legal in the state one was in and the individual was 21 years old or older, they could legally bet on any sports game available on any of the apps.
They’re a lot of many different sporting events or leagues that generate more money than others. For example, the NFL will get more bets and money from users than a soccer league in the Netherlands. Before this pandemic, it seemed like nothing could stop these sites from making a ton of money with all the big-time sporting events coming up. Everyone was interested in March Madness, The Masters’ Tournament, and the NBA playoffs, just to name a few.
This was supposed to be the time all these sports book sites were going to make a fortune because so many people would put bets on these events. Even college basketball conference tournaments were going to be a big moneymaker. Unfortunately, all these events were either postponed or canceled. No Cinderella teams that you called in November making it to the Final Four were going to make you big bucks, neither would your favorite golfer winning The Masters. Everything was put on hold.
Even though the NFL season and Super Bowl generates a ton of revenue, from March to May, everything was just going to be sports on sports non-stop, meaning bets were going to be placed non-stop.
So, what’s next for these sites? How can they recover? Things were going so right for almost two years, and now after nearly three weeks, status is still unclear.
One of two things will happen when sports come back to our lives. One, the sports books will take off again, every user who has been desperately waiting to bet will degenerately bet on anything right away. They couldn’t pick their favorite college basketball team to win the championship, so they’re going to take their degeneracy to random MLB games. Don’t be surprised if books offer promos to hook users back. An example would be: Deposit $10 and get $100 in free bets from DraftKings. Or something along those lines. Anything to get a regular user back.
Two, since there is no indication of when sports will be back, nobody knows what’s going to be available to bet on. If there isn’t a large event right away, which I don’t think there will be, there is a possibility that users won’t be persuaded to bet on anything. Say sports come back on June 1st, what’s exciting to bet then? NBA finals maybe? That won’t take place right away either. Not saying that there isn’t going to be anything exciting on television, just not nearly as much as the events that were supposed to happen from March to May.
For these sites, it comes down to every user’s individual train of thought. Do I bet on anything I can when sports come back, or do I appreciate what’s on TV and save myself some money? It’s difficult and hard to say in these times, but legal sportsbooks have a critical month coming up.