In any competition when one participant performs five times better than all its foes combined, that’s domination. The DraftKings Indiana mobile sportsbook did exactly that in the Hoosier State in October.
It was just the first month of legal online sports betting in Indiana, but DraftKings got out to a huge lead. Other operators have a significant gap to make up to compete for market share.
Just how much did DraftKings Indiana win October by?
On Thursday, Oct. 3, DraftKings was one of two Indiana legal sportsbooks to start accepting wagers online. The other was BetRivers.
FanDuel started doing the same on Tuesday, October 22. All three mobile sportsbooks reported handle for the month, and those figures were as follows:
- DraftKings: over $39.37 million
- BetRivers: over $6.26 million
- FanDuel: over $2.37 million
It’s important to note that FanDuel was only operating for the last 10 days of the month, whereas BetRivers and DraftKings were up and running for 29 of the month’s 31 days. With that in mind, this is still domination for DraftKings.
Putting DraftKings’ handle dominance into context
DraftKings proved that brand awareness counts in the gambling industry. The online book averaged more than $1.35 million in bets per day, while BetRivers averaged just over $215,862 in daily wagers. That was in the same time frame in the same market.
Even FanDuel outperformed BetRivers in that metric, further proving sports betting is a name game. FanDuel averaged over $237,000 in bets placed per day in Indiana last month.
Another advantage DraftKings enjoyed is the proximity of its retail partner, the Ameristar Casino in East Chicago, to the Chicago metro. The retail partners of the other two mobile sportsbooks, the Blue Chip (FanDuel) and French Lick (BetRivers) casinos are comparably much farther from Chicago, meaning less out-of-state traffic from Chicagoans.
DraftKings’ mobile Indiana handle was about four and a half times the bets that both BetRivers and FanDuel took in during October 2019. As is to be expected, that volume helped revenues for the Ameristar.
DraftKings helped deliver a win for Ameristar as well
The Ameristar’s retail sports betting handle was no lightweight during October either. Bettors put down $6.79 million in person in the East Chicago locale for the month.
Again, that was more than the Blue Chip’s $4.55 million and French Lick’s $791,706 in retail handle combined. The biggest win for Ameristar and DraftKings was in terms of win, however.
DraftKings did five times the revenue for the month that BetRivers and FanDuel claimed together. The winning total for DraftKings was $3.49 million while BetRivers and FanDuel combined for $694,530.
In a similar fashion, Ameristar’s retail revenue ($1 million) topped the combined revenues of the Blue Chip ($741,048) and French Lick ($73,745) casinos. Combined online and retail revenue for the Ameristar in October was $5.02 million, over twice what BetRivers and FanDuel claimed put together.
While dominance of this nature may not be sustainable for DraftKings, it does give the brand a significant head start in a market where it takes money to make money. That jump on their competitors could prove vital as the market becomes more crowded.
The following months could see many more brands like BetIndiana and PointsBet launch in the Hoosier State. Even upon successful launches, it will be difficult to catch up with DraftKings if it continues to take in bets at the rate it did in October.
