Fanatics CEO targets 2022 sports betting debut amid recruitment drive
Michael Rubin expresses desire to give sports fans “everything they want digitally in one place”
Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin has expressed his intention to take bets on US sports by the end of 2022, building the global sports retailer into a one-stop-shop for both merchandise and sports betting.
In an interview with US media personality Colin Cowherd on the FanDuel-backed The Volume podcast, Rubin outlined plans to diversify from the group’s core merchandise business into other areas of appeal for sports fans.
“We really want to give the sports fan everything they want digitally in one place. I think that’s a massive opportunity,” Rubin told Cowherd.
“We spent really the last 10 years building a really good experience for the sports fan with merchandise, then we woke up, we said ‘Wait a second, we have close to 100 million sports fans, and they do a lot of other things digitally. How about if we could give them everything in one place?’ And that’s really the desire we have is to give the sports fan the ultimate digital sports experience and everything they want in one place,” Rubin added.
Fanatics’ ambitions to expand into sports betting have been well documented, and the firm has gone as far as creating a betting and gaming division.
The firm has trademarked the BetFanatics brand name and made key hires including ex-FanDuel CEO Matt King to the CEO role, former Action Network COO Ari Borod as its chief commercial officer and former Paysafe SVP of iGaming product & strategy Scot McClintic as its new CPO.
Fanatics currently has more than 60 open roles in its betting and gaming division including four director level roles and other positions across product development and software engineering.
However, the company has yet to launch in a US state and faces an uphill task in breaking the dominance of operators including US market leaders FanDuel, DraftKings, and BetMGM.
Reflecting on this, Rubin reiterated his stance that Fanatics could gain market share from the US big boys over the long term, thanks to cross-sell opportunities arising from Fanatics’ merchandising business.
“I think we’re in the second or third inning of sports gambling. I think very long term. My lens is what a fan wants 10 years now, 20 years now, 30 years from now and so on,” Rubin explained.
“I think 10 years from now, sports gambling will be completely mainstream in most places in North America, I think the experience will also be demonstrably better and I think that’s a great thing.
“For us, we don’t worry about how things start, we finish worry about how they finish, this is a marathon, it’s not a sprint, and we’re going to make sure to create the best product for sports fans, the best experience, and we have you know, huge strategic advantages,” he added.
Rubin also stressed that more than 100 million people visit Fanatics every year.
“To be able to take that 100 million fans and not only service them with all their merchandise needs and all of their collectible needs but also with their sports betting needs is a big opportunity for us.
“I think we can service the fan better do things better for them, and at the same time have a better business model,” Rubin noted.
As preparation for a launch, Rubin sold his 10% stake in Harris Blitzer Sports Entertainment (HBSE)-owned NBA franchise the Philadelphia 76ers (nicknamed the Sixers) as well as NHL side the New Jersey Devils due to a conflict of interest with league rules regarding betting companies.
Alluding to a potential end-of-year launch, Rubin explained his decision to dispose of the ownership stake.
“It just got too complicated. When we bought the Sixers in 2011, I was the third-largest shareholder. It was a great experience that I was pretty involved in over the last several years.
“As Fanatics has started getting much bigger, we were a $250m company, the year that I bought into the Sixers together with Josh Harrison, David Blitzer, who were the managing partners, and this year we’ll be more than $7bn in revenue.”
Rubin continued: “We’re in the collectibles business in a big way, we have deals with thousands of individual athletes, we’re hoping to take bets on the Sixers by the end of this year and neither of those businesses really work with being an owner of a sports team.
“It was great when it wasn’t a conflict, but when I saw it was holding back Fanatics it was immediately an easy decision for me to reach,” he added.