Fubo CEO insists sports betting drive was the “right move” as he plans to revisit vertical

Fubo CEO David Gandler has said the streaming platform will revisit sports betting in the future after citing market conditions as the core reason behind the decision to pull Fubo Gaming.

The group switched off its sports betting division in October 2022 just two months after launching a strategic review into the business.

At the time, Gandler said the decision was driven by the “rapidly evolving macroeconomic environment”.

Speaking on SportsPro’s StreamTime Podcast Gandler said he still believes branching out into sports betting was the “right move”, but the group’s expectations were hampered by market conditions.

Gandler pointed to soaring interest rates and “crumbling stock prices”, which left investors wary of deploying capital and ultimately led to the decision to pull sports betting operations.

Reflecting on the launch of Fubo Gaming, Gandler said: “At the time, I believed the thesis was correct. The macroeconomic environment was perfect. When you are acquiring customers, if you can amortise those acquisitions across multiple products then you are taking advantage of your marketing budget.

“If we could acquire sports viewers and then 20% of those would place bets, then that would make sense. If we had one million customers, we would then have 200,000 gambling. That doesn’t even include the fact these people are staying engaged on the platform and watching more ads,” he added.

Fubo cemented its sports betting aspirations by acquiring sports betting technology platform Vigtory in H1 2021.

Launches in Iowa and Arizona were followed by the major target of New Jersey. However, the New York-listed firm’s performance failed to meet expectations.

The operator generated $1.9m of handle in Iowa in 2022, achieving revenue of just shy of $117,000. In Arizona, Fubo recorded handle of $210,377, down from a high of almost $900,000 in February.

Speaking on the launches, Gandler remarked: “We launched with Iowa, but that market was too small to see anything. The big launch for us was New Jersey during the NFL pre-season. As we were building that out, the markets continued to deteriorate, with increases in inflation and stock prices crumbling.

“We did the fiscally responsible thing. I don’t think we got a lot of credit for shutting it down quickly. Because the market changes, you have to be flexible.”

Looking ahead, Gandler once again raised the prospect of Fubo working with a third-party to achieve their sports betting aspirations, before also suggesting a potential sell-off of its tech stack.

Gandler concluded: “What we did see was the people who watched and played put more money into their betting accounts and watched more video [content]. Directionally, we saw what we wanted to see. I think that in the future this is an area we’ll continue to try and figure out.

“What has become clear is that we won’t do it ourselves, we’ll have to include a third-party, or a betting company might bid for our backend.”