D.C. United Opens 1st Retail Sportsbook In MLS. Will Others Follow?

A bit lost within an exceptionally busy week of Major League Soccer’s 2022 season was the report from the Washington Post’s Steven Goff that FanDuel’s retail sportsbook at D.C. United’s Audi Field would begin taking wagers on Thursday.

The location becomes the first of its kind at an MLS stadium. And in one sense, it represents MLS joining a brave new world of American sports. In another, it is merely falling in line with soccer traditions elsewhere around the globe.

Either way you look at it, though, it may not be the start of a larger MLS trend.

Online betting has been the primary revenue driver in the sports gambling industry since a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed all 50 states and the District of Columbia to legalize sports betting.

Yes, some retail sportsbooks in stadiums and arenas have followed. But they have been concentrated in jurisdictions like Washington, where the District of Columbia laws provide a major incentive for retail locations.

In most of D.C., online bettors can only use the GamBetDC app, which is operated by the D.C. Lottery and offers odds that are less competitive than the market average.

But fans near stadiums and arenas can also bet at retail books located in those venues, or on mobile apps that are able to determine if a bettor is in the area of a retail book. Caesar’s operates the retail and online wagering at Capital One Arena, home of basketball’s Washington Wizards and hockey’s Washington Capitals. BetMGM operates the sportsbook at baseball’s Nationals Park. And now FanDuel runs the show at D.C. United’s Audi Field.

While sports betting overall and the practice of in-stadium wagering is new to most major American sports, it’s commonplace in England’s PremierPINC
League, which is the most-watched league in the world, including in the United States. And online and retail wagering is common across most of Western Europe, which is the hub of global soccer commerce.

Even with that precedent, it’s unlikely we’re going to see a lot of MLS clubs rush to follow D.C.’s example.

Audi Field is unique both in terms of a legal jurisdiction that gives some privileges to retail operators, and its location as a downtown venue in a highly trafficked area near bars, restaurants and residential areas. With most soccer-specific MLS stadiums only hosting a few dozen live sporting events a year, both of those ingredients are probably necessary for other clubs to make a retail book worth the overhead.

Additionally, MLS has purposefully moved into major metropolitan areas that have less pro sports saturation relative to their size. That’s smart business for a league looking to establish itself as an important institution in those markets. But it coincidentally leads to less markets with legal betting.

Of Major League Soccer’s 28 teams, fully half operate in states where no form of sports betting has been legalized. Sporting Kansas City (Kansas), the Columbus Crew and FC Cincinnati (Ohio) play in states where betting has been legalized but not yet launched. The Portland Timbers (Oregon), Vancouver Whitecaps (British Columbia) and CF Montreal (Quebec) play in states or provinces where sports betting is run exclusively by one operator, leaving little incentive for that operator to try and grow its brand through paying for partnerships with clubs and stadiums or arenas. And Nashville SC plays in Tennessee, the only state that has online sports betting but no allowance for retail sports books.

In the meantime, plenty of clubs have partnered with betting companies in other ways since Major League Soccer passed regulations allowing them to in 2019. The league has a partnership with BetMGM for the time being. And with MLS partnering with AppleAAPL
for its new global streaming deal, mobile betting partnerships may be more appealing than retail ones in the longer term anyway.