Fanatics turns shoppers into bettors

Fanatics is proving that a sportsbook can be built with retail data instead of TV ads. The company already owns checkout, email, app, and loyalty relationships with more than 100M sports fans, so it can push a jersey buyer or card collector toward betting far more cheaply than DraftKings or FanDuel can win that same person from scratch. That matters because sportsbook growth is usually constrained by marketing spend, not product scarcity.1 2 3

• Fanatics built this edge before betting. Its commerce business powers more than 900 team, league, and college storefronts, and that retail engine built a customer list at roughly $19 CAC. By contrast, sports betting and fantasy operators have often spent far more to acquire users, making Fanatics structurally better positioned to profit on casual bettors.2 4
• Incumbents used the same playbook earlier, just with fantasy instead of merchandise. FanDuel and DraftKings turned daily fantasy users into sportsbook customers after PASPA fell, because fantasy users were cheaper leads than cold start sportsbook users. Fanatics is applying that same conversion logic with shopping, collectibles, and FanCash instead of fantasy contests.4 5
• The traction is visible in scale. Fanatics Betting & Gaming grew from about $300M of revenue in 2024 to $1.6B in 2025, while DraftKings reached about $6.05B in 2025 revenue. Fanatics is still smaller, but the point is not parity yet. It is that a non sportsbook consumer funnel is now producing meaningful betting volume against entrenched leaders.1 5 6

The next step is turning this lower cost acquisition into a full wallet strategy. If Fanatics can keep moving fans from merch and cards into betting, then into higher value gaming products where legal, it starts to look less like a challenger sportsbook and more like a sports consumer bundle that incumbents cannot easily copy because they do not own the same commerce touchpoints.3 4