There have been plenty of cases of sports media companies leaning into gambling content recently, and an interesting new one comes from Yahoo Sports. Yahoo announced today that they’re launching a “Yahoo Sportsbook powered by BetMGM” element to their main app, which will allow for users nationwide to view odds on games. It will also allow New Jersey users to make bets within the app, and that’s expected to expand to other states down the road. Here’s more from their release:
Today, Yahoo Sportsbook powered by BetMGM launches on Yahoo Sports allowing fans nationwide to view betting odds across a variety of sports. Users of legal age in the state of New Jersey can click through the odds to place bets on BetMGM. The new offering gives sports fans a new way to enjoy the games they love, integrating sports betting opportunities into the Yahoo Sports app and desktop experiences. Yahoo Sportsbook powered by BetMGM elevates the experience for sports fans, getting them closer to the games they’re passionate about and closing the loop from content to transactions.
..Fans can take advantage of the first Yahoo Sportsbook powered by BetMGM promotional offer, using a $10 deposit to claim $100 in free bets on BetMGM.* Available to sports fans in New Jersey to start, Yahoo Sportsbook powered by BetMGM will soon become available to fans in other states where sports betting is legal. Users not in the state of New Jersey can check out all the free and paid games on the Yahoo Fantasy platform.
As noted there, Yahoo has already dove into free and paid daily fantasy products (which launched back in 2015), so they have some experience in areas adjacent to betting on games. And it’s interesting to see the company making odds available nationwide; that provides some functionality to this app addition even in states where they don’t have a click-to-bet partnership set up yet, and even in states where there isn’t yet expanded legalization of sports gambling. But linking the odds to an opportunity to bet seems particularly powerful, and it will be interesting to see how that goes in New Jersey and to see how quickly it’s expanded to other states.
Something else that’s notable here is that this is just going to be part of the Yahoo Sports app rather than a separate app. That reduces the hurdles in marketing this to Yahoo’s existing user base, especially as those users won’t even need to download a new app to check out this gambling content. The gambling content here certainly isn’t going to appeal to every user of the Yahoo Sports app, but there may be a whole lot of people at least checking out the odds there if this make it easy enough to do that. And this may lead to a fair bit of betting through the app in New Jersey, and potentially in other stats if it is expanded there.