As regulated sports betting spreads across the United States, some markets are seeing more success than others. One market that’s struggled to get off the ground is Washington D.C. In an effort to get back on track, the US Capitol, with its strange place in US geography and politics, is partnering with FanDuel and leaving its current provider in the dust.
GamebetDC, DC’s current operator, has struggled to put out a profitable product in the nation’s capitol. Part of that is due to some tricky rules that govern DC sports betting. For starters, the population of Washington DC is just 712,000, which makes turning a profit very difficult. Operators are also only allowed to offer their online products in a limited zone surrounding their retail outlets – another significant hurdle to profitable operations.
Now that FanDuel is taking over the DC franchise, they’ll be able to leverage their massive market share advantage to make the market more profitable. FanDuel currently holds a 56 percent market share in Maryland and Virginia, and already have a partnership with the DC United soccer team. That partnership means FanDuel already has a retail outlet in DC.
FanDuel’s DC footprint is going to increase significantly when they enter DC, as they will take also be taking over GamebetDC’s 63 retail lottery locations.
Frank Suarez the Director of the Office of Lottery and Gaming (OLG) to the D.C. City Council commented on the move to iGamingBusiness saying, “OLG and Intralot have evaluated the current platform and believe that FanDuel and its industry leading platform will perform better within the highly competitive DMV region.Having a national, market-leading platform will help to quickly improve the player experience and drive significant revenue growth.”
Intralot will be paying a $5 million transfer fee to DC to complete the move to FanDuel.