Online Betting and Instant Payouts the Odds-on Super Bowl Favorites

Want to see a consumer truly upset about payments friction? Tell a gambler to wait a day (or even several days) to collect their winnings.

Before we’re halfway through Rihanna’s halftime show at Super Bowl LVII on Sunday, Feb. 12, we’ll have a much “bettor” idea of how the expansion of online sportsbook is being received.

With 26 states plus Washington, D.C. now with legalized online sportsbooks, we’re looking at an entirely new scale and scope for wagering on the big game. But here’s the thing: when money is both the product and the experience, as with gambling, instant always wins.

Gambling winnings were about seamless money mobility long before that phrase was ever uttered — pay for your chips, gamble, cash out at the window — poof. Instant.

Now, move that process to an online gaming experience and it gets complicated.

Instant for the Win

Ingo Money CEO Drew Edwards knows all about money mobility (and gambling too) which clearly helped Caesars Digital decide to team with the fintech to power its sportsbook app.

When that deal was announced, Edwards told PYMNTS: “I personally cannot imagine winning a bunch of money and then being told [by the site], ‘OK, we’ll send you a check in a week.’ … This needs to be a digital-first experience.”

It’s that kind of thinking that landed this whale of a client, and it was no mean feat.

VP of Payments and Fraud at Caesars Digital Trent Striplin told PYMNTS the near-real-time payouts Ingo engineered for the sportsbook clear an “array of regulatory, financial and accounting controls and fraud reviews,” in about an hour.

A leading voice in the FinTech world for instant “money in, money out,” Edwards recently told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster, “The Super Bowl is by name one of the mega events as it relates to advertisers, and as it relates to this type of activity and behavior. None of that happens without money in and money out or money in between. Instant payments are just natural in that process.”

Except they’re not. Not yet, or at least not widely so. For example, if you put the money in using a credit card, the money out part may take hours. Other methods can take even longer.

As the wagering website Oddspedia explains, using DraftKings as an example, “PayPal withdrawals are typically processed within 24 hours which means you have access to that money in 1-3 days. Bank transfer/ACH withdrawals should reach you in 3 – 6 days while checks can take as long as two weeks to arrive at your door. The fastest method by far is using the Cash at Cage option in which you present yourself at the retail sportsbook. Doing this should result in cash in your hands in mere minutes.”

Cash at Cage retail for a mobile betting app? ACH in half a week? Check in the mail?

That doesn’t feel like winning somehow. At least not like online winning.

Vegas, Baby

BetMGM gets it. As director of payments, Andy McGonnell recently told PYMNTS of the sportsbook’s Mastercard Send integration, “it’s really about giving players access to those funds as quickly as possible. That is a critical aspect to establishing trust, especially in a market that is young in its tenure, [like] the U.S.”

This is crucial, as McGonnell added, “What we’ve seen is when funds are tied up in a multi-day payment cycle, we actually prevent players from being able to access those funds for other spending opportunities or even additional wagering.”

The idea of an ecosystem where gambling winnings are paid out instantly, enabling players to keep playing, stop for a while, go to dinner, see a show, what have you, is an intrinsic part of the allure of this whole online gaming experience. This is as it should be.

In the December Money Mobility Tracker® titled “Casinos, Gambling And Gaming Platforms Bet On Instant Payments,” a DraftKings spokesperson told PYMNTS, “Customers want faster payouts. In fact, the speed of payments is so important that it can be a differentiator for customers choosing between gambling operators. Based on this strong desire for quick disbursements, DraftKings offers instant payment options to its customers.”

It beats waiting in the crêpe line at The Borgata for your money to arrive.

No disrespect to The Borgata. Or crêpes. It sounds like a cool way to await your winnings.

We’ll soon know who’s facing whom — the Cincinnati Bengals, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Philadelphia Eagles, or the San Francisco 49ers — after the Jan. 29 championship games.

No matter who plays, we predict the big winner will be sportsbook apps with instant payouts.