PointsBet Plans Newsletter to Lure US Gamblers

Sportsbooks are tired of just rolling with it.

So Australian sportsbook PointsBet is teaming up with sports media outlet Front Office Sports to launch a gambling-centric newsletter, the latest attempt by an online sportsbook to reduce the extravagant sums of money they spend trying to find new bettors.

The Ball Street Journal

For sportsbooks, customer acquisition cost is table stakes that have kept on rising. BetMGM and Draftkings are paying upwards of $370 in marketing costs and free bet promotions just to attract new bettors. And once they have them signed up, keeping them pot-committed to the gambling life is another ongoing costly venture.

Providing up-to-date news on the latest same-game-parlay opportunities is an increasingly important arm of any sportsbook enterprise. Last week, FanDuel announced it’s launching both a linear TV network and a streaming platform. For PointsBet, available in 11 US states, newsletters offer a cheap way to keep bettors in the game:

• Front Office Sports’ in-house content studio will produce the newsletter with editorial guidance from PointsBet senior editor Teddy Greenstein. It’ll hit inboxes thrice-weekly — Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays, presumably to align with NFL games — starting September 8, with plans to eventually expand to a daily publication.
• PointsBet already has a bank of 1 million reader emails, the company’s executive vice president of media and strategy Rick Martira told Axios, and will repurpose its existing “Hustle by PointsBet” weekly newsletter for the new addition. Eventually, the site says it could monetize the venture via sponsorships and advertisements.

Double-Down: The newsletter is PointBet’s second major media partnership, after it signed a five-year, reportedly $500 million deal with NBC Sports in 2020 to become the network’s official sports gambling partner.

Just Saying: Newsletters – we’ve noticed, thank you very much – are hot. Turns out hitting inboxes daily is a darned good way to reach news consumers. Late last year, abrdn scooped investment-focused newsletter Finimize. And earlier this year, a sales and marketing software company acquired the business-focused newsletter The Hustle for a reported $27 million. The sector has plenty of, dare we say, upside.