Sports gambling giant FanDuel is threatening to terminate its exclusive contract running D.C.’s mobile sports betting platform if the city follows through with a plan to open the city’s mobile sports wagering market to more operators.
The D.C. Council on Wednesday passed a $21 billion budget that includes a provision to create a new type of betting license allowing the city’s professional teams to run their own sports betting apps in partnership with an established sportsbook of their own choosing. If Mayor Muriel Bowser signs the fiscal year 2025 budget bill, FanDuel said it would move to establish a partnership with one of the city’s teams and “invoke its termination right” running the city’s mobile betting app under a subcontract with the Office of Lottery and Gaming (OLG.)
“Any District-wide sportsbook operations by OLG would no longer have participation from FanDuel,” FanDuel President Christian Genetski wrote to Council Chairman Phil Mendelson in a letter dated June 5, a week before D.C. Council’s second and final vote on the budget bill.
FanDuel, whose sports betting app is the most popular in the country by number of users, has only been running D.C.’s mobile betting platform since April, when it was tapped to take over the city’s unpopular and underperforming betting app, GambetDC, from the Greek gaming company Intralot. Intralot, whch has run GambetDC since mobile betting launched in D.C. four years ago, remains OLG’s vendor but now subcontracts the mobile betting app and dozens of in-store gaming kiosks to FanDuel.
