DraftKings and Penn Entertainment rally after sports betting data comes in strong
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All indications are that sports betting is not a casualty of consumers pulling back on spending due to macroeconomic pressures.
Early September gaming revenue reports out of New York, Indiana and Iowa have looked strong enough to keep analysts optimistic. The first full month of football, as well as a surge of interest in baseball pennant races and Aaron Judge's home run chase, helped push New York's sports betting handle back over $1B for the month and gross gaming revenue was a record $143M. For the month, FanDuel had a 39.7% market share in the Empire State and DraftKings (NASDAQ:DKNG) took down 34.6% of the market share.
On Wall Street, Needham noted that losing weeks in the NFL for favored teams quarterbacked by quarterbacks Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Lamar Jackson point to a strong weekend for sportsbook in terms of the hold rate. Overall, hold rates have been reported to be better than anticipated for sportsbooks during the 2022 football season. The firm continues to see DraftKings (DKNG) as a leader in the emerging North America online gambling market and still sees online sports betting and iGaming as a $35B market opportunity.
Meanwhile, Jefferies updated on its Digital Gaming Brand Matrix, which incorporates app-level data in addition to social media engagement and web-traffic data. FanDuel and DraftKings (DKNG) ranked first and second again, while BetMGM (MGM) (OTCPK:GMVHF), Penn Entertainment's (NASDAQ:PENN) Barstool Sportsbook and PointsBet (OTCQX:PBTHF) rounded out the top five. The recent sports betting data has been strong enough for Jefferies to keep Buy ratings on Flutter Entertainment (OTCPK:PDYPY), DraftKings (DKNG), MGM Resorts International (MGM), Caesars Entertainment (CZR), Penn Entertainment (PENN), and Rush Street Interactive (RSI) even with the deep valuation reset in the consumer sector still ongoing.
Shares of DraftKings (DKNG) were up 6.93% at 2:12 p.m. on Monday and Penn (PENN) showed a 4.29% gain. Rush Street Interactive (RSI) was 5.05% higher.
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