In August 2020, NBCUniversal announced a five-year marketing deal with PointsBet projected to be worth nearly $500 million over the full term. The agreement included ad commitments, equity options and affiliate fees from the sportsbook.
On Monday, DraftKings announced a new, very different multiyear marketing deal with the NBC Sports parent. Unlike PointsBet’s wide-ranging agreement, this one is structured solely as an advertising commitment, and while terms were not released, it’s a fair assumption that the financial concessions are significantly less than $100 million per year.
The differences in structure and scale highlight just how much the market has changed in the last five years, how sportsbooks’ needs have shifted and what that means for the largest sports rightsholders.
Advertising, of course, is still critically important for gaming operators. But whereas 2020 marked a mad rush for operators large and small to jockey for customers in new states, the pace of change in 2025 is quite different. A dozen states launched legal sports betting in 2019 and 2020; there will be just three across 2024 and 2025.
There’s also been consolidation, as several companies hoping to secure name recognition and a meaningful slice of the U.S. market have gotten a reality check in recent years. Right now DraftKings and FanDuel account for roughly 70% of the country’s legal online sports betting handle. No one else has more than 10%.
There’s also been a shift in how sportsbooks view the benefits of partnering with major media companies. In the early days of U.S. sports betting expansion, many thought sports broadcasters would be critical customer retention partners. Though Disney initially stayed on the sidelines as sportsbooks and broadcasters hastily paired up, PointsBet locked in NBC, William Hill walled off CBS, the Stars Group partnered with Fox and Penn National experimented with Barstool. As those deals aged—and some of those same operators dramatically scaled back their ambitions—the market re-set its expectations for those tie-ups moving forward.
Perhaps the biggest change, however, is in target audience. Back in 2020, sportsbooks were looking to acquire customers in the states that were legalizing. In 2025, the strategy has shifted to focus more on the states that haven’t legalized. Some of the country’s most populous states—No. 1 California, No. 2 Texas and No. 8 Georgia among them—still do not offer legal sports betting. With fantasy-first companies and prediction markets now offering residents there some real betting facsimiles, DraftKings is looking to stay top of mind for when it can join the fray with its sportsbook or a competing predictions market product. If the target audience includes tens of millions of people who can’t bet legally at home, then there’s less incentive for affiliate fees to be included.
DraftKings Jason Robins used to say that once 33% of the country could bet on sports legally, it would make sense for the company to shift the bulk of its advertising strategy from local to national. Right now, the laws are permissive to more than 67% of U.S. adults. Partnering with NBC’s platform lets DraftKings reach both pools of people.
DraftKings has a handful of other media deals, including ones with Warner Bros. Discovery’s Turner properties and Amazon’s Thursday Night Football. (Its deal with ESPN was terminated in 2023 when ESPN Bet was launched). All together, they make up just a piece of the company’s annual “sales and marketing” costs, which are closely watched by investors because of their impact on profitability. DraftKings reported $233.2 million in that category for the second quarter of 2025, an 8% increase from the same quarter last year ($215.7 million) and a 12% increase from the second quarter of 2023 ($207.5 million).
Under this new NBCUniversal deal, DraftKings (Nasdaq: DKNG) will be featured across all of the company’s top sports properties. That includes NBC Sports’ rights with the NFL, PGA Tour, , Premier League soccer and, starting later this year, the NBA. It also includes the 2026 men’s World Cup rights held by NBCUniversal’s Spanish-language division Telemundo. That covers live games and studio shows on broadcast, cable, digital and streaming.
For the ad spend, DraftKings will have priority selection across the NBCUniversal (Nasdaq: CMCSA) properties. Slots that DraftKings does not utilize could theoretically then be sold elsewhere.
DraftKings will also have access to a more prominent physical presence at many of those events—such as Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara, Calif., next year or a future Ryder Cup. That gives the sportsbook more opportunities to build out hospitality experiences that it can offer its partners, clients and VIP bettors.
link