Sports Betting Looks for a Parlay Into Funds

What do Kevin Hart, Jon Hamm and Jamie Foxx have in common? They all really want people to engage in sports betting. And now, after years of permeating practically every inch of TV, the internet and social media, sports gambling is attempting to find a corner in traditional finance.

Rex Financial announced Monday it’s launching Alpha Sports, a company that will create ETFs tied to futures contracts on CME’s FutureSports Performance Indexes. As Rex puts it, Alpha Sports will “turn what happens on the ice, the field and the court into exchange-traded funds.” Volatility Shares and LeagueShares are also pursuing sports-performance ETFs, having filed for similar NHL funds in August and MLB funds this week.

Though striving for innovation, there might be a hole in their game plans: Most games happen after markets have closed. “For these to really successfully move, you’re going to need 24/7 trading, which is coming,” said Matt Tuttle, CEO of Tuttle Capital Management. “If I’m sports betting, I’m not moving between 9:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. I’m waiting to see the injury report before a game and know who’s playing.”

From Stats to Assets

REX has filed with the SEC for Alpha Sports’ BaseballShares and HockeyShares, suites of ETFs tracking every MLB and NHL team (there will also be 2X leveraged versions):

• The funds will track indexes measuring team performance using official sports statistics. Every hit, goal, run, stolen base and more feeds into a rules-based benchmark that converts those statistics into a single index level, which can then be tracked through futures contracts and, ultimately, ETFs.
• Tuttle isn’t convinced the average sports gambler will migrate to ETFs for regular wagers, though. “The sports bettor is going to have a whole lot more flexibility on their DraftKings account than in their [brokerage] account,” he said.

Mangia, Mangia. The ETF wrapper has become an experimental training ground. And the hunger for what is essentially gambling doesn’t stop at sports. Roundhill, Bitwise and GraniteShares all filed in February for ETFs tied to presidential, House and Senate election outcomes.

Rex, Volatility and LeagueShares are taking the throwing-spaghetti-at-the-wall approach to product development, said Zachary Evens, Morningstar senior analyst. “If one or a handful of products stick, they can be very lucrative for the ETF issuer and more than make up for operating many subscale ETFs,” he said. “These are just the latest pieces of spaghetti.”