The difference is Fanatics isn’t so much using sports betting to bring customers to its brick-and-mortar locations. Instead, sports betting can drive consumers to buy more gear.

The company’s core digital business is — and has been since the current iteration was founded in 2011 in Jacksonville, Fla. — sports merchandise. Founder Michael Rubin has been capitalising on the fan experience for close to 15 years. And that phrase, “the fan experience,” is as critical to the company’s sportsbook mission as it is to any of its other businesses, whether that be team jerseys, trading cards or collectibles.

“The goal is, I think you have to go all the way to the top of Fanatics to understand,” Matt King, the CEO of Fanatics Betting & Gaming, told iGB. “How do you make the whole fan experience better? It’s actually very hard. The love and hate you have for your team. You wait in line to get into a game. It’s kind of fragmented everywhere.

“What we view as uniquely different from everyone, is we can create one digital platform for the whole user experience. … The goal is to relentlessly enhance the fan experience.”

Building Fanatics Sportsbook

At the start of 2023, Fanatics Sportsbook was really still more an idea than a reality. The company opened its first retail sportsbook in Maryland in January 2023. Today (5 September) it opened its latest one, at the Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City. Along the way, it purchased Amelco source code and hired a bevy of engineers so it could build out a proprietary platform. But the company had market access in only a handful of US states.

In June 2023, Fanatics announced that it was acquiring PointsBet USA. With that acquisition came entree into more than a dozen states. In August, Fanatics Sportsbook — or in some cases “PointsBet, a Fanatics Experience” — went live in eight states. A Fanatics Sportsbook of some kind is now available in 22 states. Fanatics Casino is available in four states.

Fanatics Betting & Gaming is the only major wagering company that doesn’t have roots in brick-and-mortar casinos or daily fantasy sports.

FanCash the unifying product

The one thing that bridges the merchandise side of the business with the gambling side is FanCash. Referred to on the sportsbook site as “the currency of sport,” FanCash is unique to Fanatics. It allows consumers of any of the company’s businesses to earn and spend FanCash on merchandise, collectibles and trading cards — or gambling.

“It’s interesting because the loyalty side is actually a really unique microcosm of the brand,” King said. “It’s [FanCash] probably the thing that has resonated the best with consumers. Your devotion is finally paying off, and no one else can really deliver that.”

Ahead of the football season, Fanatics Sportsbook revamped its FanCash offering. Consumers now get up to 10% of their wagers in FanCash, win or lose. Basically, the bigger the bet and the longer the odds, the more FanCash is awarded.

FanCash = Brand recognition beyond the book

While companies like BetMGM or Caesars do offer rewards or loyalty points, many digital sportsbooks don’t, leading a Fanatics spokesperson to quip that it “makes us 10x more rewarding than other leading sportsbooks.”

FanCash allows bettors to get a tangible product that will further, as King said, “enhance the fan experience.”

“The second piece is that it is authentically ours,” King said. “When you talk to consumers about different brands in the space, you’re expecting to get gambling-related stuff, you’re not thought about as someone who can do more than that. So we have the brand recognition beyond sports betting.”

Ironically, a Fanatics spokesperson pointed out, even when other betting companies do jersey or merchandise giveaways, that merchandise is often made by Fanatics.