Live-streaming sports platform fuboTV (FUBO 6.72%) continues its preparations to offer sports betting as it upgrades its app dashboard to feature live stats and chances to win a year's free subscription to its service.
Tech website Fast Company reports the live-streamer is using the upgrade to enhance user engagement at the moment, but sees it as an opportunity to gauge how much interest there would be to place bets through a TV.
Image source: fuboTV.
While fuboTV intends to launch sports betting later this year, it will first test the waters during the World Cup soccer qualifying matches for the South American Football Confederation.
FuboTV has exclusive live-streaming rights to the 70 different games that will be played ahead of the finals in Qatar next year, and viewers will be able to see in-game stats crawl across the screen.
And they can win a year's subscription to fuboTV (which currently costs $65 per month) by answering questions such as "Who will score the next goal?"
Those are the types of services that would be useful to having subscribers transform from mere viewers to bettors. Moreover, micro betting, or wagers on those types of in-game quizzes, could be a huge windfall for sportsbooks. For example, it's estimated 75% of all sports bets in the U.K. are micro bets.
Yet it's bound to be a highly competitive arena. DraftKings is offering real-time game scores and betting odds in partnership with DISH Network's SlingTV while Bally's and Sinclair Broadcast Group are casino-gambling and regional sports networks. Others are also angling for a piece of a large and growing pie.
One obstacle to fuboTV's ambitions is that its sportsbook will only be live in three states, though one of them is New Jersey, currently the biggest state in sports betting by far.
