At ‘Challenger Brand’ Fanatics Casino, The House Rewards More Than Most

Let’s hope Fran from the Fanatics Betting & Gaming accounting department didn’t see Eilers & Krejcik Gaming’s report from April on online casino promotional spend by operator.

Fran is the character played by Academy Award-nominated actress Taraji P. Henson in the series of Fanatics commercials that debuted in March. The theme of the ads, built around the slogan “The House Always Rewards,” is that Fanatics is spending excessively on promotions and bonuses that give money or rewards back to players — to the eternal frustration of Fran, who has books to balance and wants Fanatics to be comfortably in the black.

Well, EKG’s numbers for promo spend relative to net gaming revenue (NGR) in Pennsylvania present a case of not just life imitating art, but life exceeding art. The report said Fanatics Casino’s spend was 59.8% of NGR over the trailing three-month period and 59.9% over the trailing 12 months, while its competitors averaged 32% and 28.8%, respectively.

This would not sit well with Fran.

Fortunately for Henson’s commercial alter-ego, Fanatics President of Gaming Conor Grant insists EKG’s numbers are inaccurate. (EKG declined to comment on this assertion, though the company’s reports do spell out that the numbers are to be viewed as “directional indicators of relative spend, not absolute levels.”)

But Grant acknowledges Fanatics is bonusing at a higher rate than the competition in Pennsylvania — just not by as wide a margin as EKG reported — and that ethos was the driving creative force behind the commercial concept.

“The advertising is a bit tongue-in-cheek and playful,” Grant told Casino Reports, “but we had to give our finance team a heads up about this campaign before it went live, because we didn’t want to offend any of them.

“In all seriousness, it’s a good, healthy tension. Any business will have a good finance team that will challenge us, because commercial folks sometimes like to spend — and if you believe EKG’s report, we just like to spend all the time and don’t worry about profitability,” Grant added with a laugh.

Those promo-sensitive Americans

Prior to joining Fanatics in November 2024, Grant worked primarily in the U.K. market, most notably for Flutter UK & Ireland and for Sky Betting & Gaming. Since turning his focus toward the U.S., he’s noticed a few substantive differences.

“What has shocked me is the U.S. consumers are much more promo-sensitive,” Grant said, noting he finds that to be a legacy of American land-based casinos — and something that also applies to non-gaming operations. “I think U.S. consumers in general are more loyalty-savvy. I’m talking airline rewards, hotel rewards. That isn’t quite the same in U.K. and Europe. That’s just another factor and facet in the U.S. market that we have to contend with.”

Fanatics Casino is newer than most of the competition in the space, having first launched in West Virginia in 2023, and recently passed the one-year mark of having a stand-alone casino app. Grant refers to the fast-growing Fanatics as a “challenger brand,” knowing it has a long way to go to catch the likes of FanDuel, DraftKings, and BetMGM. And in order to truly challenge the operators that currently boast the most customers, Fanatics Casino has to provide offers that entice.

“We are definitely spending at levels that are very competitive,” said Grant, whose sole focus as president of gaming is the casino side, with sportsbook management being left to other departments. “I think broadly, our strategy is that we’re looking to deliver something very different. And casino customers tend to have more accounts than sportsbook. So when the customer has an experience with you in casino, a good one, you tend to keep that greater share of that wallet.”

All the things Fran isn’t a fan of

So what are the tenets of Fanatics Casino’s approach to offering promos?

It starts with the rewards currency known as FanCash, which Grant describes as “a very unique selling proposition” available across the Fanatics ecosystem. FanCash can be put toward casino credit, bonus bets, experiences such as the annual Fanatics Fest in New York City, and apparel. (Fanatics was an apparel company first, after all.) FanCash accrues during play, and a customer’s FanCash balance can be made visible at all times.

Related to FanCash is the FanCash Spins daily game, whereby as long as you wager at least $10 on a casino game in a day, you’ll earn FanCash Spins that await you the next day.

Then there are jackpots — increasingly a staple of online casinos, though Grant says Fanatics approaches them differently.

“We’ve created something unique in our fantastic jackpots,” he said. “On all of our competitors’ sites, you pay a fee to be in the site-wide jackpots. In ours, it’s free, and we issue thousands of jackpots every week.”

But bonusing really starts with the initial-deposit offer, which Grant emphasizes is of utmost importance in attracting new customers in the first place. The current acquisition offer: Wager at least $10 on casino games within seven days of first deposit and receive 1,000 free spins (100 each day for 10 days) on Triple Cash Eruption. One important note: Winnings from free spins carry only a 1x wagering requirement at Fanatics, a key difference from some sites that make it more challenging to walk away with winnings a player can withdraw.

“Look, different customers need different retention mechanisms,” Grant said. “And that’s where our CRM (customer relationship management) and our segmentation really comes into the fore. We try to tailor it as best we can to customers’ needs. There’s not much point in giving a customer 100 free slot spins if they’re playing blackjack or live dealer. It’s really about getting that tailoring and the segmentation right.”

Of course, there are countless elements of an online casino that factor into customer acquisition and retention that have nothing to do with promotions and bonuses. The quality of the app matters, the game selection matters, having original and/or exclusive games matters. For Fanatics at the moment, its exclusive WWE-branded slot stands out.

“It’s not just about rewards within our strategy,” Grant noted. “We are starting to expand our content strategy and asking, ‘What else can we do? How can we leverage this to create a broader strength in our ecosystem?’ I think there’s a number of aspects that we want to really push to engage the customer across product … and keep the customer locked in within the Fanatics ecosystem.”

Where will iCasino go from here?

While Fanatics Casino continues to claw its way up the revenue rankings, the operator is united with its competitors in hoping to see the legal online casino industry expand. Fanatics Casino is currently available in four regulated states — Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, and West Virginia — and there are only eight legal states total (one of which, Maine, hasn’t launched yet).

Grant is of two minds regarding whether to be optimistic about additional jurisdictions coming on board.

“We’ve reined back how we think about it for the next 12-18 months, but beyond that, I think that we’ll be slightly more optimistic that we will see some more states on the horizon,” Grant said. “But, look, with politics, a lot changes. It does take time. So we’re cautious in the 12-18-month time horizon, but from ‘28 onwards, we would be hopeful that there’d be a bit of momentum in some of the bigger states that aren’t regulated today.”

In the meantime, Fanatics and fellow operators will focus on the states that have legalized, where revenue still continues to grow month after month — even though you might think six years past the initial Covid lockdowns some of these markets would have matured and leveled off.

Grant has a straightforward theory as to why that maturation hasn’t quite arrived yet.

“What you’re still seeing is a migration effect of offline players to online, and the adoption of people being more comfortable using mobile technology,” Grant said. He expects participation numbers to keep growing for a little while longer, though he has seen signs lately of the rate of that growth beginning to slow.

Amid all this noise, Fanatics Casino will keep using promotions and bonuses to try to grow its customer base and market share. Sorry, Fran. The commercial division isn’t planning to stop being a thorn in your side anytime soon.