Popular Millennial Site Bleacher Report Dives Deep Into Sports Betting

Bleacher Report, a millennial-focused sports website, has been steadily expanding into the sports betting space, attracting a new generation of gamblers who don’t consider sports gambling a bad thing, according to a report by CNBC.

About a year ago, the Supreme Court changed the laws on sports betting, and many companies are now integrating odds into their sports coverage. Bleacher Report in particular has been pursuing the space, and has added a section on gambling to its website.

The company also announced a deal with Caesars in Las Vegas to start producing sports betting studio shows inside the casino. The programming is scheduled to start later in the summer and is expected to potentially reach the 250 million people Bleacher Report interacts with on social media.

“We are commingling the data we have about usage, experience and what consumers want with Caesars data, which is some of the most powerful and cumulative data in the world for sports betting,” Bleacher Report Chief Executive Howard Mittman said.

There are currently about eight states that have legal sports betting, and that number is expected to increase. There are leagues and teams that have partnered with sports books, and many traditional media sites have added new sports betting features to their platforms.

A recent study by Bleacher Report showed that almost two out of every three sports fans between the ages of 21 and 34 find sports gambling socially acceptable. The action also creates more engagement with visitors.

“I think younger consumers relate to the gamification of all things — not just Fortnite, EA Sports and Madden, ” Mittman said of millennial fans. “If you look at Las Vegas, younger consumers don’t use slot machines, they are more apt to bet on sports.”

Bleacher Report said its sports betting category has shown massive growth for the company.

“Because we have an app that has almost 20 million downloads, 9.5 million consumers receiving alerts from us anywhere from 5 to 20 times per day, we sit on a lot of first-party data,” Mittman said. “We understand what consumers are doing. We like to think of the app as the heartbeat of the American sports fan.”