73 million Americans expected to bet on NFL this season: Report

According to a report from the American Gaming Association, up to 73 million Americans plan on betting on the NFL this year, a 56 percent increase from last season. Yahoo Finance's Josh Schafer, Brooke DiPalma, and Alexandra Canal take a look at the growth of the sports gambling space, which has been enabled through the expansions of online betting platforms like FanDuel — a subsidiary of Flutter Entertainment (PDYPY) — and DraftKings (DKNG).

Video Transcript

- A lot of people are planning to gamble on the NFL this year. Again, it is the eve of the NFL season. NFL kicks off tomorrow so the American Gaming Association, out with their annual projections for how many people are going to bet on the NFL this year. We'll run through a couple of the key numbers here.

73 million Americans plan to bet on the NFL that is up 56% from last season. And then when you take a look at how many-- or how many fans are planning to bet, you can see that 19% of US adults plan to bet, while 35 million planned to bet online.

And then 13 million planned to bet at a physical sportsbook, which is interesting because we talk a lot about online sports gambling, but there are still people going into these sportsbooks to bet.

To me, this is a story I'm working on right now that will go up on our website over the weekend. But the biggest story for me of sports gambling right now is you have ESPN getting involved with Penn.

And then you also have Fanatics, which is a giant sports e-commerce retailer run by Michael Rubin, valuation over $30 billion private company, but are they able to disrupt what DraftKings and FanDuel have been able to build over the last couple of years?

I'm sure you guys talked to some of your friends about gambling. It's really kind of DraftKings, and FanDuel, and everyone else right now. And so are these new companies, especially when you talk about ESPN, that sports brand, Disney getting involved, can they disrupt what has become sort of two top dogs at the top is what I'm excited to see this fall?

- And the loyalty that's with these companies, the loyalty that they've been able to build over the past years. I mean, it's only been a short run up to this 2023 season of how long sports gambling has been legal in the US.

And to think about the White space that still exists. I think, it's something like more than 30 states it's legalized. There's still, of course, many more to come.

And I think also too, we were talking before, but I myself haven't really dabbled too much in gambling. I feel like there's so many other Americans who are similar to me that haven't done it yet.

And certainly, as you know, that I hear it. I'm like this is insane you need one person on a specific team. You need to run 50 yards in order to then, you know, get two touchdowns and then you win $500 after betting only $10. I'm like this just sounds so complicated. I don't know if it's worth all the money.

- Well, I do think these stats prove that there's just a lot more accessibility, right? You can do it on your phone. It's easy. There are more states that are legalizing this. It's in the news a lot more.

You mentioned that Penn-ESPN deal. I mean that also involved Barstool, which I think got a lot of people curious about that. So it's just-- it's definitely a presence right now.

And this stat stood out to me. Self-identified NFL fans, so those fans that are constantly watching and tuning into football, 37% are projected to place a bet this year. That's up from 42% from last year. So pretty significant.

- I would have thought it'd be higher, to be honest. It seems like that's just like where when you look at it--

- It might be.

- When you look at [? when ?] the broadcasts are going, it's so betting focused now. It feels like when you watch these games, they're literally talking about it so you feel like kind of everyone's doing it. I don't know. I thought that number might be a little higher.

- To that point, I think we're going to eventually hit a point where on streaming services and cable you can-- they're going to utilize AI or whatever that you can bet in real time.

- It'll certainly help if they get some of those big states like California, Texas, Florida et cetera to legalize and actually allow mobile sports [? gambling. ?]

- And I know the NFL is leaning a little bit more into gambling way more than they used to at least.