Last week saw Yahoo enter the online sports betting market with the launch of the Yahoo Sportsbook platform in partnership with BetMGM, opening serve in New Jersey with eyes toward other parts of the country. As media entities continues to wade into the water of legalized gambling, Cynopsis asked Geoff Reiss, VP and General Manager of Yahoo! Sports, about the platform and what it means to Yahoo’s future.
Reiss on the partnership with MGM: We’ve been working on this idea between Yahoo Sports and BetMGM for more than two years. It springs from what we’ve always been great at, which is fantasy sports and connecting fans to their passions. At Verizon Media our core strategy is to build products and experiences that speak to our consumers’ passions and help drive the deepest value. We knew this was the next logical step for our fans, because we’re deeply aligning the consumer journey even more from content discovery to transaction. Another important piece for us was picking the right partner, and we think we’ve certainly done that with MGM Resorts International and Roar Digital, which have created a gamechanging platform with BetMGM.
On betting content: Really, it’s a natural fit with our immersive mobile experience including our best-in-class fantasy platform, original content, scores and stats, and live games. We’re always looking for ways to enhance and deepen the fan experience, and so this was an obvious evolution in our platform. Especially with the success of our expanded fantasy offerings that fans have really responded to, from daily fantasy to season-long fantasy football.
On pros and cons: I don’t think we saw any potential drawbacks, honestly. We were careful to try and create an integrated but unobtrusive experience that allows users who want to wager to be able to do so, but they also aren’t required to. And also, as a digital content partner of MGM Resorts International, we’ll now be able to take our content to a new level at their incredible properties and for major tentpole moments in sports.
On opening day: We debuted Yahoo Sportsbook powered by BetMGM on Thursday (November 14), in New Jersey to start, and we’re really pleased with how fans have been responding so far. We imagine we’ll have an even better picture of things after we’re able to assess this past weekend’s activity in total. But we love feedback and are keen to iterate based on how fans respond.
On the future: The launch of Yahoo Sportsbook was a first step into our future. For the moment, it’s available only to sports fans in New Jersey, but it will soon become available to fans of legal age in other states where sports betting is legal. For users not in the state of New Jersey, we also have a great amount of free and paid games on the Yahoo Fantasy platform that will hopefully tide you over.
