Prominent US sportsbook DraftKings is probing an interesting addition to its payments and KYC journey with the launch of a subscription service.
Sportico reported last Friday (3 January 2025) that the company is triailing a $20 a month subscription service in New York, one of the US largest sports betting markets.
The company is promoting the new service by offering customers boosted offers if they sign up.
In a statement seen by Sportico, DraftKings said: “The subscription service was designed to offer our customers an enhanced fan experience, creating more excitement and value to our extensive parlay offering,”
Online sports betting has exploded in the US since 2018 when PASPA, federal legislation prohibiting states from launching their own regulated betting markets, was repeated by the Supreme Court.
Legal betting was largely restricted to a handful of states such as Nevada as well as some Native American-run tribal casinos. The proliferation of betting in the years since has understandably seen companies engage heavily with the payments space.
Offering a broad range of payment methods – whether via direct debt, cash, eWallets, or other methods – can prove critical to setting a betting operator out from the crowd and beating its competitors to the punch when acquiring new customers. This may have been on DraftKings’ mind when developing and launching its new service.
Meanwhile, the demands of AML and KYC regulations have also led to betting firms to work closer with fintech and finance companies. This was noted by Nicole Cemelli, Vice President of Finance at Tipico Sportsbook, who spoke to Payment Expert for the SBC Leaders magazine last year.
“There are valuable lessons to be learned from other sectors as it relates to technological innovation in payments,” Cemelli told Payment Expert. “Financial institutions, for one, employ advanced fraud prevention techniques that igaming operators benefit by implementing.”