The Pennsylvania online sports gambling market has added another player to the field. After proving itself in New Jersey – and to regulators on the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board – FanDuel is now live in the Keystone State, ready to compete against a small handful of others that are already warmed up. The global sports gambling and fantasy sports operator has set up shop at the Valley Forge Casino Resort to offer online wagers and has gone even further than the others. It is offering a native iOS app to appease Apple executives.
Almost as quickly as the U.S. Supreme Court dropped the gavel and disintegrated PASPA in May of last year, New Jersey launched sports gambling and FanDuel was right there, ready to get in on the action. It has continued to work its magic in the state and helped New Jersey recently overtake Nevada as the leading sports gambling location in the U.S.
According to a press release on the Pennsylvania operations, FanDuel Group Chief Marketing Officer Mike Raffensperger said, “We’re leveraging our expertise in creating world-class fantasy and sports betting experiences to build the best online sports betting platform in the state of Pennsylvania. We became the number one sports betting operator in New Jersey by focusing on the customer experience and we can’t wait for sports fans in Pennsylvania to join the party.”
The new online app will give bettors options such as point spreads, over/under, parlays, prop bets, round robins, moneylines and teasers, as well as an “extensive list of live in-game wagers” to make any sports competition “more exciting.” Being able to offer a native iOS app is a huge step forward and overcomes a limitation established recently by Apple brass. Apple had said that all apps must be constructed using the company’s own coding, instead of options such as HTML5. That brought to a halt virtually all gambling apps, since these had been using the adaptable HTML5 language to easily turn their web-based platforms into mobile platforms. Apple now cannot take a swipe at FanDuel, since it is operating within the company’s guidelines.
FanDuel plans on supporting the rollout of its new Pennsylvania products by deploying an omnichannel marketing campaign that will cover influencer marketing, digital media and social media promotion, sports talk radio partnerships and new TV spots. The first spot might be worth catching, as it reportedly will feature a 900-pound pig.
