The Romanian Senate has adopted a draft law which would bring about strict limits on where and how gambling operators can advertise in the country.
The law has now been submitted to Romania’s Chamber of Deputies, the decisional chamber of the country’s parliament, where it may be approved and passed into law, rejected, or amended and passed back to the Senate for further discussion.
A draft law on the matter was first initiated in late 2022, but originally included a blanket ban on all forms of gambling advertising in any medium with a view to protecting young and vulnerable people.
After debate in the Senate, however, senators amended the bill to remove the blanket ban, after considering that it would too heavily impact tax revenues coming from the gambling sector.
Instead, the new bill proposes several strict limitations on how, where and when operators may advertise.
Advertisements in public spaces such as billboards, for example, may not exceed 30 square metres in size and must not promote prizes consisting of cash or goods.
On television, no gambling advertising will be permitted overnight between the hours of 11pm and 6am.
Within the allowed window for gambling ads, from 6am to 11pm each day, ads may only be displayed during live sports broadcasts.
Even then, ads may only be played when there is a player substitution or a score change, and must be accompanied by the message “play responsibly”.
The duration of individual ads during sports broadcasts may not exceed 10 seconds, while all ads shown during a single broadcast may not exceed two minutes in aggregate.
In addition, public figures including celebrities and sports personalities may not be used in gambling marketing.
A similar recommendation is already in place in the local regulator, the Romanian National Office for Gambling’s (RNOG) code of conduct, but at present is only a soft recommendation rather than a law.
If the law is approved by the Chamber of Deputies, the RNOG will be tasked with overseeing its implementation.
FanDuel has set its sights on becoming the “first watch and wager” network in the US, as it prepares to launch its cable channel FanDuel TV in addition to an over-the-top platform to be known as FanDuel+ in September.
The Flutter Entertainment-owned US market leader promises to deliver more live sports programming than any other network in the country, as part of a move that will see it develop into more of a sports media company.
FanDuel TV will emerge from predecessor TVG, the group’s horse racing network, and has signed Kay Adams to host an hour long live morning show every weekday.
Adams, who previously served as a host of Good Morning Football on the NFL Network, will present the show from FanDuel TV’s Los Angeles studios.
FanDuel’s CCO Mike Raffensperger commented: “FanDuel TV is the first network designed from the ground up to be watched by viewers with their phone in hand.”
“We intend for FanDuel TV to sit at the intersection of live sports and interactive content and believe Kay is the best example of an on-air talent who can bring fans closer to the narratives of the games they care about most. Our goal is to provide fans compelling programming to watch and wager on in tandem with our mobile app,” he added.
FanDuel CCO Mike Raffensperger: “FanDuel TV is the first network designed from the ground up to be watched by viewers with their phone in hand.”
In July, FanDuel promoted former CMO Raffensperger to the newly created role of CCO and announced that he would be overseeing the brand’s content and programming assets, including its cable network TVG.
Meanwhile, FanDuel TV has agreed with Pat McAfee’s PMI Network to produce content as part of the network’s weekly block of programming.
The company has also reached a programming agreement with The Ringer, providing FanDuel TV content from one of the industry’s most listened to and followed sports and pop-culture podcasts and digital networks.
FanDuel’s signature sports betting show More Ways to Win will continue to be hosted by former ESPN SportsCenter anchor Lisa Kerney, bringing sports betting analysis and insight into the major sports leagues to viewers each week.
FanDuel CEO Amy Howe: “Having proven on-air talent, live content from the most influential name in sports media in Pat McAfee and the industry’s best team covering horse racing today demonstrates that FanDuel TV will be a dynamic network from day one.”
More Ways to Win has been a cornerstone of FanDuel’s digital programming with Kerney covering a variety of sports content focused on the sports wagerer in her high energy style.
“Having proven on-air talent, live content from the most influential name in sports media in Pat McAfee and the industry’s best team covering horse racing today demonstrates that FanDuel TV will be a dynamic network from day one,” said Amy Howe, FanDuel’s CEO.
As part of a licensing agreement with Sportradar, FanDuel TV and FanDuel+ will air more than 3,000 hours of live sports including international basketball league action from Australia’s professional league, the Chinese Basketball League, as well as the French and German pro leagues.
In keeping with its TVG lineage as the home of horse racing, FanDuel TV will feature a stacked lineup of coverage from respected experts including Christina Blacker, Britney Eurton, Gabby Gaudet, Mike Joyce, Todd Schrupp and the rest of TVG’s award-winning on-air talent roster.
“TVG has been the undisputed leader in the horse racing space for the past 20 years and the launch of FanDuel TV creates an exciting new platform for the next 20 years,” said Raffensperger.
“FanDuel TV and FanDuel+ will accelerate the renaissance racing is enjoying and repackage the sport for a new generation of mobile enabled fans, while also bringing new leagues and sports to the US market. We plan to offer more live sports than any network in America,” he added.
FanDuel TV will be broadly distributed on linear television through its relationships with the industry’s leading cable and satellite distributors including Comcast Xfinity, Spectrum, Verizon FIOS, DirectTV, DISH, Cox Communications, FuboTV, YouTubeTV and Hulu.
FanDuel+ will also be widely available on direct-to-consumer OTT platforms including Roku, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire, and will be free to download for existing FanDuel customers with accounts on any of its sportsbook, casino, horse racing or daily fantasy platforms.
Sports streaming service fuboTV has placed its online betting business under review and is likely to pull back from its proprietary sportsbook strategy.
The Fubo Sportsbook is currently available in two US states – Iowa and Arizona – and recently completed its licence submission to the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.
It expects to be approved in that market in time for the 2022 American football season, which kicks off in September.
During the company’s Q2 2022 earnings call with investors, however, FuboTV co-founder, CEO and director David Gandler said: “We continue to believe that an integrated wagering platform, offering both live video and the sportsbook will result in the best viewing and gaming experience for consumers.
“However, we decided to enter the wagering business in early 2021, at a time when the business climate and efficient cost of capital provided the runway to develop new business lines with longer profitability time horizons.
“Now, with the recession and inflation hitting 40-year highs; that no longer holds true. We recognise that the market has changed.”
FuboTV CEO David Gandler: “We continue to believe that an integrated wagering platform, offering both live video and the sportsbook will result in the best viewing and gaming experience for consumers.”
The business is currently exploring options to find the best path forward to scale its sportsbook offering, Gandler added, before reiterating that the business intends to turn passive sports viewers into active consumers through the integration of products including pick’em games and a sportsbook.
In a letter sent to investors, the business added: “As we have evaluated how best to scale these capabilities in today’s market, we have concluded that we will no longer pursue this [sportsbook] opportunity on our own.”
It is not yet clear which avenues FuboTV may explore for its online betting division. The firm could seek partnerships with existing sports betting suppliers in the US marketplace in order to ease the cost and technology burden associated with running an in-house sportsbook.
FuboTV generated total revenue of $222m in Q2 2022 as its subscriber base grew by some 57% year-on-year to 1.3 million users worldwide.
However, the business registered a $91.3m operating loss for the quarter, and said it does not expect to be free-cash-flow positive until 2025.
Despite this, the firm’s share price soared by nearly 17% in Friday (5 August) trading on the New York Nasdaq.
FuboTV is not the only sports streaming company pursuing a B2C sportsbook strategy. In April of this year, loss-making streaming giant DAZN unveiled plans to launch a sports betting operation via a newly created DAZN Bet brand.
The company opted against a proprietary sportsbook strategy and instead partnered up with Gibraltar-based technology provider Pragmatic Group.
Entain is on a mission to innovate its Australian product offering according to CFO Rob Wood, with the operator locked in a battle for market share.
During a Q2 earnings call with investors this month, Wood shed some light on the firm’s strategy down-under – a region where major international brands compete with a domestic giant in Tabcorp.
He told investors: “In terms of Australia, are we taking share? Yes, it’s been clear that we’ve been taking share for some time. Obviously, there’s the large operator in Tabcorp, which is not so strong online and that is benefiting us, but also taking share from the number one operator [Flutter-owned Sportsbet] as well.
“I’m just looking at a market share chart in front of me right now and it’s a very healthy picture over the last few years and it continued to accelerate through 2021 and, we believe, the first half of 2022 as well.”
What helps differentiate the operator from the competition is, in Wood’s view, its product and customer proposition.
“We launched something called Mates Mode earlier this year, which is seeing great adoption. I think [CEO of Entain Australia] Dean [Shannon] told me there’s been 250,000 chats using that feature since it launched a few months ago,” Wood explained.
“So this is a way of creating an account for a group of people with their own private chat functionality within it. We’re working on more social experiences that are exciting, and also building a new racing channel, which hopefully will be going live in due course.
Entain Australia chief executive Dean Shannon: “Our ambition is to have wall-to-wall Australian and international racing broadcasts for customers and build a lot of bespoke content around that.”
“So it’s sort of nonstop development of the customer proposition in a really interesting and innovative way,” he concluded.
Indeed, last week Entain further improved its product offering in Australia with the launch of four online television channels focused on horse and greyhound racing. As first reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, the channels make up part of the operator’s broader media arm, which is also producing written content and documentaries for punters.
The division, led by general manager of content and entertainment Andy Hoad, boasts a headcount of around 30, and is currently recruiting commentators and writers for pre-race programmes, social media and online content.
Australia CEO Shannon said: “Our ambition is to have wall-to-wall Australian and international racing broadcasts for customers and build a lot of bespoke content around that.”
While he did not reveal how much Entain was investing in the project, Shannon did say it was a “serious” amount of money.
Content specialist Hoad said the intention was to build a full-fledged media business to help it keep pace with other operators in Australia, including Tabcorp and Racing Victoria, which run a number of their own racing and betting-related media channels.
Entain’s NGR from Australia, where it is live both Neds and Ladbrokes, climbed 21% year-on-year in Q2.