FanDuel Sportsbook will offer members live streaming of two NHL games every night for the remainder of the 2020 season.
The deal comes through a partnership with IMG Arena, which recently procured rights to provide sports betting operators in the United States with live streaming. The NHL games will be able to be viewed in states where the FanDuel betting app is available, which are New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Indiana. The company expects to expand into several new markets in the coming months.
Live streaming of sporting events by betting operators has been happening around the world and has been very popular. FanDuel noted that last year there were 56 million people the world over that viewed the over 10.5 billion minutes of content that IMG Arena streamed.
“As we continue to innovate and expand nationwide, the ability to further enhance the live game and live betting experience is increasingly important to our customers,” said Niall Connell, the GM and SVP of the FanDuel Group.
“Our goal is to become a one-stop-shop for all sports and betting content, and live streaming professional sports like hockey is one of the many ways we are reaching that goal.”
The live streaming of the NHL games does not come without a bit of a hitch, as the FanDuel announcement stated, “Blackouts will apply to local teams and national broadcasts.”
While FanDuel’s streaming of NHL games is its first of American professional sports teams, it is not the first live streaming from its application. In 2019 FanDuel started to stream live soccer matches held in Europe. It also live-streamed tennis matches from its New Jersey betting app.
Connell stated that live streaming of sports events would likely double the number of wagers for those sports. An executive at Sportradar AG, which is a company based in Switzerland that has forged a partnership with FanDuel, made the point that the USA’s different time zones makes it possible for bettors to view sporting events and bet on them before and after primetime broadcasts.
IMG Arena also has a partnership with the PGA Tour that sees the company distribute data from the world’s top golf circuit to media outlets around the globe. Also, IMG Arena has exclusive rights to both administer official data and live video feeds of PGA Tour events to regulated sports wagering and gaming markets. The people watching the streams can see live betting odds on the screen, which allows bettors to make wagers on that event and not miss any of it.
The benefit for FanDuel in the deal with IMG Arena is that it can cross-promote its sports wagering, daily fantasy sports, casino gaming online, and horse racing products. The betting firm recently reported millions of dollars in revenue in 2019 because of “cross-pollination”.