Sports betting operator BetMGM has tapped noted actor/musician Jamie Foxx as the face of the company’s new ‘The King of Sportsbooks’ marketing campaign.
On Tuesday, BetMGM announced that Foxx had agreed to star in the brand’s new advertising campaign, built around the not entirely provable claim that it’s the King of Sportsbooks. But in a country in which the swill known as Budweiser can claim to be the king of beers, why not shoot for the moon?
The campaign, which was concocted in tandem with creative agency 72andSunny New York, will feature “a variety of traditional and social media advertisements,” with the first example being a video promo that will arrive “in the coming weeks.” Foxx will reportedly appear to levitate over the fountains at the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas, in order to showcase “the excitement that comes with sports betting.”
BetMGM chief marketing officer Matt Prevost called the campaign “the next step in the evolution of the BetMGM brand,” which is a joint venture of US casino operator MGM Resorts and UK-listed gambling giant GVC Holdings. Prevost further claimed that BetMGM “exists at the intersection of sports and entertainment and Jamie fits this positioning perfectly.”
BetMGM was birthed two years ago when the GVC/MGM joint venture Roar Digital was formed. In July, the partners pledged to spend an additional $250m on top of their original $200m commitment to ensure they became a major player in the US sports betting and online gambling market.
BetMGM is currently licensed to offer sports betting in seven US states and hopes to be in four additional states by year’s end. BetMGM started slow in some markets but has been gaining ground in recent months, although still well behind the current market leaders DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment’s FanDuel brand.
Celebrity endorsements are a relatively young phenomenon in the US market, reflecting the fact that the market outside Nevada is only a couple years old. But way back in 2016, William Hill US ran a commercial in Nevada featuring non-levitating baseball legend Pete Rose playing up his controversial betting past.
