Day 2 of Betting On Sports America – Digital started off with a heavyweight guest. Bill Hornbuckle, CEO of MGM Resorts, sat down ESPN’s David Purdum and offered plenty of opinions and insights into the state of the gambling industry today.

Partnerships between gambling operators and sports teams have become all the rage. Pardum wondered if this might lead to a company like MGM taking a direct stake in a team. “I don’t believe it would be good for the sport or the industry because obviously it’s still a competition and you do not ever want to intertwine those two,” he said. “I would be hard pressed to believe they would want to cross over that line. I just think it gets a bit difficult for the commissioners and for the teams to then regulate what does and doesn’t happen.”

Similarly, partnering with media companies has increasingly become the obvious move, as companies like Penn National have proven with their acquisition of Barstool Sports. Others have resorted to partnerships, and Hornbuckle thinks it’s the right move. “For the media companies it’s being able to participate in the space without having to do it – if you will – basically as a large-scale affiliate for lack of a better definition. So there’s pure economics, there’s exposure, there’s engagement most notably.

“For us it’s a way into Yahoo! Fantasy Sports,” Hornbuckle noted, referencing the partnership they’ve had since 2019. “They’ve got 60 million viewers – they’ve got about five million daily fantasy participants. Getting access to them – because they obviously enjoy sports, they’re passionate about it – getting them to switch over to live gaming is a pretty easy link. And so that’s how we benefit and ultimately how they benefit but for them it’s all about engagement. It’s about growing their database and giving people more content and more reasons to come back and to stay longer while they’re there.”