Does iGaming in the US Market Have a Serious Impact?

With the state of Michigan allowing for legalized online casino games in addition to sports betting, Innovation and Strategy Consultant for the gaming industry, David Sargeant, posed the question:  Does igaming make a difference?

Sargeant notes that Rush Street Interactive have done well in other multi-product markets while questioning whether Golden Nugget Online Gaming can find sports betting market share as well as dominating igaming?

David Woodley, Vice President, Advertising Sales at WatchMojo, suggests iGaming "pretty much doubles or more the average lifetime value of any sign up versus 'just' a sports bettor."

James Kilsby, VP Americas @ VIXIO GamblingCompliance, agrees.

"The 'big bang' launch is one major reason why Michigan is such an important case study for US market," Kilsby said.  "Another: this is the first time tribes will be participating in online gambling en masse in their home state on essentially equal terms to commercial casinos. It's a significant legal/policy precedent on several levels, but also key for tribes in other states with big tribal gaming markets to gauge economic benefits of online vs. cannibalization and other perceived risks."

But none of this matters if the app is crap.

"The UI and UX for the majority of these apps range from truly awful to 'meh' at some point when you have 15-20 books in a given market that will matter," Woodley observed.  "It's very odd that multi billion dollar companies continue to roll out apps that are buggy and have 'meh' at best UI/UX and especially FTUX."

Virginia joined Michigan in entering the legal US sports betting landscape during one of the busiest weekends of the year that, not only featured the NFL Conference Championships, but also a marquee UFC fight between Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier.

In Virginia and Michigan alone, there were 7.5 million transactions from more than 400,000 betting accounts, which accounted for an insane 25 percent of the total number of gambling transactions in the entire country.

- Chris Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher