The sports betting scene in the United States is not only strong, but it is also one of the fastest-growing industries in the country. Bettors can have a dizzying number of bookmakers.
Although those bookmakers offer the main markets such as moneyline, spreads and totals, some of them are more established than others, which is vital for bettors to know when signing up with a new bookmaker.
With that in mind, we’re going to combine a list of our favorite sportsbooks and load in a little context about their history and how long they’ve been in business.
Founded in 2012 in Boston, DraftKings was first introduced as a Daily Fantasy Sports brand, and its first festival was a head-to-head baseball festival presented on Major League Baseball’s opening day in 2012.
A year later, MLB invested in DraftKings, marking the first time a U. S. professional sports team had made a DraftKings DraftKings. The U. S. invested in DFS, a watershed moment that, in some ways, helped set the tone for the legalization of sports in the country five years later.
The company reached one million registered users in 2014 and expanded its overseas logo with its UK launch in 2015.
It burst onto the sports scene in 2018 after the Supreme Court ruled the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which allowed states to legalize sportsArray as unconstitutional. It was introduced in New Jersey in August 2018 and has since been introduced in 25 other states, as well as Washington D. C. and Puerto Rico.
The other major gathering in North American sports betting, FanDuel, was founded in 2009 as a DFS provider in Edinburgh, Scotland. It held its first DFS event in 2010.
It spent most of the mid-2010s building and acquiring smaller businesses, which led it to expand and launch its mobile app in 2015. A year later, it announced plans to merge with DraftKings, but the Federal Trade Commission sought an initial injunction. blocked the merge.
When PASPA was declared unconstitutional, it merged with Paddy Power Betfair (an Irish-based bookmaker). It introduced a brick-and-mortar sportsbook at Meadowlands Racetrack in New Jersey before launching its first cellular sportsbook in New Jersey in September 2018.
It has since introduced a retail or mobile sports site in 25 other states, adding Washington D. C.
It is also one of the biggest names in online horse racing thanks to its FanDuel Racing app. It also has its own TV network and FanDuel Faceoff, an app that lets you play mobile games for genuine money.
Although MGM has been in the American gaming industry since 1987, it only introduced mobile sports betting in 2017, when it introduced an online sports betting site in Nevada, which it called PlayMGM at the time.
Once PASPA was canceled in 2018, MGM embarked on a similar partnership with GVC Holdings (a gambling operator in the United Kingdom) to help develop its PlayMGM mobile sports betting site, which launched in New Jersey in August 2018.
BetMGM signed partnerships with the NBA, NHL, and MLB later that year, and announced its 2020 single-team partnership with the Denver Broncos.
PlayMGM was officially renamed BetMGM in 2019, which expanded mobile sports betting by offering new betting markets, as well as an early cash out feature and odds boosts. Mobile sports betting is now legal in 26 states, as well as Washington D. C. and Puerto Rico.
It is known for its dazzling advertising crusader celebrities such as Jamie Foxx, Kevin Garnett and Tom Brady.
Like MGM, Caesars is one of the biggest names in gaming in North America before moving into mobile sports betting. The company dates back to 1973 with the Eldorado Hotel in Reno and has since grown to include several retail casino brands such as Harrah’s, Horseshoe and Tropicana.
In April 2021, Caesars acquired mobile sports company William Hill for $3. 7 billion and rebranded all William Hill offerings as Caesars Sportsbooks.
The app was officially introduced in August in 8 states (Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia) and renamed existing William Hill apps in Illinois, Nevada, and Washington D. C. This call replacement included a new advertisement. Campaign based on the comic book J. B. Smoove and Eli and Peyton Manning.
In 2022, Caesars took another major step by signing a multi-year deal with the Cleveland Cavaliers that included the launch of a sports retail site at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
Bet365, the oldest bookmaker on this list, was founded in 2000 in Stoke-on-Trent, an open-air town in Staffordshire. It was officially introduced in 2001 as a sports betting platform and commercial operation in England. While sports betting was not legal in the United States at the time, sports betting and gambling have been legal in England since the country passed the Betting and Gaming Act of 1960.
The company continued to expand in England and spent three years as a kit sponsor of Stroke City from 2012 to 2015, while also signing two kit sponsorship deals with Bulgarian clubs Ludogorets Razgrad and Slavia Sofia in 2016.
After PASPA was canceled in the United States, Bet365 was introduced to New Jersey through a partnership with the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City. It was introduced in Kentucky, Louisiana, Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey, Iowa, and Colorado in 2021, 22, and 23 before launching in Indiana and Pennsylvania in 2024.
It has no physical presence in the United States, which means its mobile sportsbooks are the way to bet with the brand.
In 2011, entrepreneur Michael Rubin introduced Fanatics, an online store offering sportswear, trading cards, and authorized collectibles, which temporarily accommodates the increased demand in the sportswear industry (some would say it’s too big).
The company purchased sportswear company Majestic, which led it to collaborate with Nike to make MLB box jerseys.
In May 2023, Fanatics acquired PointsBet (an American gambling company) for $150 million and ended up paying $225 million for the logo to outbid DraftKings. Once the deal was closed, the PointsBet sportsbook (which is legal in 8 states) changed its name to Fanatics Sportsbook.
It is now available in 21 states and is known for providing one of the most productive welcome offers in sports betting, allowing new users to claim a bonus bet every day for five consecutive days. It also offers bettors FanCash, which is the credits edition of the Fanatics site that can be used at the sportsbook or on the Fanatics retail site.
It is to communicate about the history of BetRivers without mentioning Pennsylvania, as the BetRivers lifestyle was born from the presence of two casinos located on both sides of the state. In 2009, the Rivers logo began with the launch of the Rivers Casino on Pittsburgh’s North Shore. A year later, the SugarHouse Casino opened on the Delaware River in Philadelphia.
On December 13, 2018, both casinos launched retail sports before officially launching them two days later. On May 28, 2019, SugarHouse introduced the state’s first mobile sportsbook, before SugarHouse purchased Rush Street Gaming (SugarHouse’s parent company) that summer, leading to the mobile sportsbook being renamed BetRivers Sportsbook in October 2019.
BetRivers is now licensed in 14 states and is known for being more of a “small market” bookmaker, as it lacks some of the features of larger bookmakers and offers many odds boosts and promotions in local groups in a state.
While each and every sports fan had heard of ESPN, the logo entered uncharted territory in 2023 through the launch of ESPN BET.
ESPN BET’s adventure began in 2020 when Penn Entertainment bought a 36% stake in Barstool Sports and introduced Barstool Sportsbook, a sports betting app that sought to leverage Barstool’s presence in sports and entertainment.
The online sportsbook in 17 states in 2023, when Penn acquired all of the remaining shares and announced a deal with ESPN to launch ESPN BET, with Penn paying $1. 5 billion to obtain a logo license with ESPN for 10 years.
ESPN BET was officially introduced on November 14, 2023 in the 17 states where Barstool Sportsbook existed. The sportsbook is known for its markets and promotions and features ESPN personalities.
ClutchBet was introduced in North America in November 2022 when it was introduced in Iowa. It is owned by BlueBet Holdings, a publicly traded Australian company established in 2015 that also operates the BlueBet and betr brands in Australia.
Although ClutchBet is only available in a few states and has yet to catch up in terms of popularity and market share, it has a solid sportsbook with a transparent design, giant betting markets, competitive odds, and strong promotions.
The foundations of Hard Rock Bet began in 1971 with the founding of the first Hard Rock Café in London. A second location opened in 1978 before the logo expanded across the United States in the 1980s and 1990s.
The logo entered the entertainment business when founder Peter Morton spent $80 million to open the Hard Rock Hotel near the Las Vegas Strip.
Since then, the company opened 10 more casinos and jumped into mobile sports gambling with the launch of Hard Rock Bet in New Jersey in 2019. Since then, it has expanded to six other states (Arizona, Florida, Indiana Array Ohio, Tennessee, and Virginia) and is known for being the only cell sports site in Florida.
Photo via PAUL ELLIS/AFP Getty Images
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