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Maryland is a sneaky-good sports betting market. That’s why it’s worth noting when operators enter AND leave the “Old Line State” — both of which just happened. Let’s get into the latest news:
Two Operators Exit Maryland Marketplace
The first casualty was the Betfred Sportsbook. First, the operator’s physical sportsbook — Long Shot’s in Fredrick, Maryland — closed up shop on June 30. The actual betting app will join it in closing on July 31.
The news is not really surprising. If you’ve read this site enough: you know that Betfred has barely made a dent in the market share held by the likes of BetMGM, DraftKings, and FanDuel, among others. The platform’s Maryland sports betting handle was under $500,000 during the month of May.
Zooming out, this type of bad performance has followed Betfred since entering the market in November 2022. Numbers show they’ve accepted $20 million in bets since then with only $1.5 million in actual revenue. If accurate, that accounts for less than 0.5% of the market share inside the state.
Personally, we thought its mobile apps were clunky. We mean, they required unique apps per state — not one that can be accessed anywhere it was legal. It’s a reason why Betfred is behind the eight ball in most states, not just Maryland. They remain in business in nine eight with Ohio also being announced as an exit spot (despite a sponsorship deal they had with the Cincinnati Bengals).
As bad as Betfred was doing, the Superbook was doing even worse. Many of you might be reading this and asking yourselves, “who?” Welp, Superbook is the betting arm the Westgate SuperBook in Las Vegas, Nevada — arguably the biggest single book in the world (by land size). Superbook has a name there, but little elsewhere. Welp, Superbook is also on the outs in Maryland.
But not just Maryland, a number of different states. Superbook just announced they’ll stop taking bets in eight other markets besides Maryland — Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee, and Virginia. They didn’t give a specific reason, but it’s obvious: business hasn’t been good for Superbook. It’s staying in business solely in Nevada, and that’s it.
We do have some state-to-state data to level-set the struggles of the Superbook. In almost all markets, its market share was below 0.01 percent. Here’s what we know based on public dates:
- Arizona: 0.1% of online handle
- Iowa: 0.1% of online handle
- Maryland: 0.1% of online handle, 0.05% of taxable revenue in June
- New Jersey: 0.3% of revenue share in June
- Ohio: 0.1% of online handle
- Virginia: 0.01% of handle share for January 2023 through November 2023
Betfred is on life support, but Superbook’s business is all but dead now aside from the physical location in Las Vegas. They join the graveyard of sportsbook operators that includes— Betway, SaharaBet, and SI Sportsbook.
New Players Will Struggle To Grow In Maryland
Maryland has had legal sports betting since November 2022 — a year and a half now. At this point, the market leaders are firmly entrenched. That’s DraftKings and FanDuel mainly, BetMGM and Caesars doing ok, and everyone else picking up the scraps. The latter is likely where the two newest players will end up.
As Betfred and Superbook leave, they’ll be replaced by Bally Bet and Veterans Services Corporation (VSC), two very different operators.
Bally Bet is an old-school bookmaker that recently broke away from Caesars’ ownership. It operates casinos in several different states. As it stands, Bally Bet is available in eight states — Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts (just opened), New York, Ohio and Virginia. Maryland will be state number nine, however, no go-live date has been announced yet for Bally.
And then there’s Veterans Services Corporation (VSC), who partners with its operator, British-based Bee-Fee. Together, they’ll run the LetsBetMD mobile hearing app, which is already live in the state and has been since the end of June.
We’ll be dead honest — we have no clue who the heck VSC is. Zero idea! We’ve tried out almost every sportsbook app there is to try, except there’s. If we don’t know it, we doubt most Maryland bettors will. It highlights the state of the industry.
Most bettors are “sticky”, meaning once they’ve found a platform to play on, they rarely leave it (barring a really bad experience). At this point, there are hardly any new bettors to attract in Maryland. And if there is, most of them will flock to the brands they see bombarding them with advertisements during sports games (DraftKings and FanDuel most likely).
Even ESPN Bet has struggled with this issue, and they at least have ESPN’s powerhouse behind them. However, by the time PENN rebranded its app to ESPN Bet, most bettors had already made up their minds on what app to use. Prying existing customers away from their app is tough business, which is what we expect Bally and VSC to find out soon.
Don’t forget, offshore online sportsbooks still have a decent presence in Maryland. This is because they were early, offering services before betting was even legal there. That’s even more competition that Bally and VSC will have to contend with.
