The sports betting gold rush in the United States took place in the late 2010s and early 2020s, with companies like DraftKings and FanDuel grabbing the brunt of market share. Prediction market companies like Kalshi and Polymarket have joined the gaming fray in recent years.
So where does that leave a company like Fanatics, which is still relatively new in the sports betting and prediction market space?
The competition is fierce, for sure, but it’s a fight that Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin wants to be in the ring for.
“We’re very focused on being number one in everything that we do,” Rubin told Bloomberg this week. “You know there’s a lot of places we’re not No. 1 today. In the betting and gaming business, we’re No. 3 [after DraftKings and FanDuel]. A distant No. 3. OK, so what do we do there?
“We’re going to spend a lot more money in marketing next year than we had thought we were going to spend because we’re saying ‘how do we close the gap, and how do we really grow our market share’?
“The betting and gaming business will be more complicated in 2027 because you not only have the addition of Kalshi and Polymarket, but you now have the addition of Fanatics spending at the same level as FanDuel and DraftKings. This year, we’ll spend—in that business—$350 million, and we could spend $800 million or $1 billion next year.”
Rubin is not scared off in the least about spending big in a market that many believe is now oversaturated.
“I like being a contrarian,” Rubin said. “I love when people are like: ‘Hey, the gambling business sucks’.
“Guess what? They’re right. Is it much harder today than it was a year ago? Absolutely.
“FanDuel and DraftKings competed with themselves two years ago. Now they have Fanatics, Kalshi, and Polymarket. All the marketing costs are up. Everything is more complicated in this business.
“All of that said, we ask ourselves: Is this a business that we can be better than the competition longterm? The answer is yes.”
Rubin sees Fanatics as having clear advantages over the competition, and he intends to double-down on those advantages in the coming years.
“The first thing we did was we developed this FanCash,” Rubin said. “You can use it anywhere in our ecosystem. You can use it to buy sports merchandise. You can use it to make bets on sports. You can use it to buy trading cards. You can use it to trade trading cards in our marketplace. You can use it to get tickets. You can use it at Lids. So you can really use it anywhere in our ecosystem.
“If you bet on sports, you’re kind of getting a worse deal if you don’t bet with Fanatics because every time you bet, win or lose, we give you FanCash.”
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