Edgar Bronfman Jr. Announces FuboTV Sports Betting Plan in the Works

FuboTV is a New York-based sports-focused live-streaming company that is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The company was founded in 2009 and began to be publicly traded in 2014. FuboTV has been one of the big companies when it comes to sports live-streaming, as it offers a vast array of sports on a wide range of devices, such as Roku, Xbox, iOS, Smart TV, and much more.

FuboTV had its quarterly report for stockholders yesterday. Among the news of subscribers and revenue going up, chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. stated that sports wagering would be in the company’s future. With all of this great news, the stocks soared up the morning of Veterans Day past $20 a share, when they had just closed at $15.56 a share the day prior. Obviously, the announcements are what investors wanted to hear, and it will be interesting to follow where the stock goes in the coming days. The stock has slowly come back down toward $16.60 a share as of mid-day Wednesday, still, a massive one-day increase based on the quarterly reports.

FuboTV Sports Wagering

It is very interesting to hear the live-streaming company talk about going into sports betting. Considering that FuboTV has always focused on sports, it does make a reasonable amount of sense. There are tons of directions that FuboTV could take with a sports wagering platform.

It is possible that FuboTV could be one of the first platforms to integrate sports betting directly into the viewing experience. Being able to bet on sports in the same exact place you are watching said sport could be a fantastic model for the company. However, many states have regulations that would most likely require the sports betting portion to be a separate app. With that said, nothing states that the sports-betting app cannot also have live-streaming built-in. This would lead to two apps, one with live-streaming only and one with sports betting and live-streaming.

Being based out of New York, it would seem to be one of the first markets that FuboTV would be thinking about with sports betting. New York legislatures are still working on getting online and mobile sports betting launched, so this is the perfect time for FuboTV to be working on its sports wagering platform.

Sports Betting Market in America and FuboTV

Currently, 22 states have legalized sports betting, and many of those states have online and mobile sports wagering. Some places like Tennessee, for example, are even going online and mobile-only for its sports wagering regulations. There is an obvious exploding market for sports betting in the United States, and FuboTV sees an opportunity to capture some of that market and increase revenue.

In August alone, the sports betting handle, the total amount of money taken in on wagers, for the United States was over $2 billion. The revenue that sportsbooks saw in that money was over $100 million. This is all happening without the biggest states like New York, Texas, Florida, and, most importantly, California, having legal sports wagering yet. There is plenty of time for FuboTV to really build its platform before the sports betting market explodes in America when these states legalize.

The live-streaming market has been good to FuboTV as people across the country cut out cable television from their monthly bills. Finding a way to reinvest that revenue into a sports betting platform and then tying the two platforms of live-streaming and sports wagering together may give FuboTV a significant advantage over the competition.