Is the Super Bowl sports-betting ad surge slowing down?

Each year on Super Bowl Sunday, viewers ruminate on important, philosophical questions. Questions like: Will the coin land on heads or tails? Will the result of the toss correlate with the game’s outcome? What will the halftime show performer wear? What color Gatorade will rain down on the coach of the winning team?

These questions drive hordes of people across states where sports betting is legal to sportsbooks en masse. The American Gaming Association expects about $1.76 billion in Super Bowl bets will be wagered this year, a 27% YoY increase, and Super Bowl Sunday is the largest single sports betting day of the year worldwide, according to Matthew Bakowicz, director of the sports management program at American University’s Kogod School of Business.

It’s no surprise, then, that sportsbook ads have carved out a place in the Super Bowl broadcast. This year’s game is set to include spots from DraftKings and Fanatics, with the latter making its Big Game debut. But as the sports-betting market matures in a year full of major sporting events, some past Super Bowl advertisers are adjusting their strategies around the game, with some pulling back to focus on other marketing moments.

“Advertisements are switching a little bit in the sports-betting world because they’ve already captured a vast majority of the market,” Bakowicz, who previously managed sportsbook operations for DraftKings at Foxwoods Resort and Casino, told Marketing Brew.

Still, “the biggest expense that sportsbooks spend on is marketing,” he said, so it’s a safe bet that Super Bowl viewers will still see them on their screens in some capacity this weekend.

Pregame

The number of sportsbooks advertising in this year’s game seems to be relatively par for the course: Two sports-betting companies advertised in each Super Bowl from 2022 to 2024, according to iSpot. Last year was a slight outlier, with FanDuel the lone representative from the space, when overall spend on national linear TV betting ads for the year also ticked down, per iSpot, from about $477 million in 2024 to $442.5 million in 2025.

FanDuel will technically sit out this year’s game after running ads in three consecutive Super Bowls, but anyone who tunes in before the game begins might encounter the brand, which is running a weeklong campaign culminating in a spot set to air just ahead of kickoff.

“We’ve found that the moments leading up to kickoff are when fans are most engaged,” Mike Raffensperger, president of sports at FanDuel, said in an email. “A pre-kick approach lets us show up at a moment that feels more intentional and less crowded, while still reaching one of the largest audiences of the year.”

Pre-game advertising, including the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, can be key for sportsbooks that want customers primed to place wagers once the game does get going, Bakowicz said. “They want you involved and invested the weeks prior,” he said, which is part of the reason why some sports-betting companies are rolling out their campaigns weeks early.

Fanatics, which tapped Kendall Jenner for a campaign called “Bet on Kendall” that embraces the internet joke that she may have brought some bad luck to athletes she’s been linked to, debuted the work on Jan. 27.

The question of when to drop the ad was up for debate, said Michael D. Ratner, founder and CEO of OBB Media, and CEO of Fanatics Studios, a joint venture between the two companies. The “conventional thinking,” he said, is to surprise viewers during the game, but since Fanatics’s campaign is geared toward driving earned media and conversation, the team ultimately decided they needed a longer runway.

“If you really want to try to win the Super Bowl and create the most chatter and break the internet…you need to drop early, and you need to ramp up,” Ratner said. “You want to lean into the new media era and social media era that we live in.”

Halftime

Other marketers in the space may find that broad, national campaigns are no longer the most effective way to target their evolving audiences. Almost a decade after the legalization of sports betting at the state level, some sportsbook marketers are focusing on acquiring new users in states where sports betting was recently legalized or is still being legislated, or otherwise targeting “VIP clientele,” Bakowicz said.

That’s the case for BetMGM, which ran its first Super Bowl ad in 2024, when the game was held in Las Vegas. The 2024 campaign drove “a tremendous number of players and a significant volume of new customers,” CRO Matt Prevost told us—but those customers “didn’t deliver the long-term value we were hoping for.”

The brand has since pivoted its strategy to be focused on acquiring “higher-value players,” Prevost said in an email, and this year, BetMGM is sitting out the broadcast. “We still view our 2024 Super Bowl presence as a brilliant moment in time,” he said, “but our strategy today is more targeted.”

Fanatics is a relative newcomer in sports betting, having rolled out its sportsbook just about two and a half years ago. Part of the company’s motivation to run a Super Bowl ad, CMO Selena Kalvaria told us, was to boost brand awareness in a crowded space, rather than only targeting engaged bettors.

“It really tackles, to me, a sweet spot,” she said. “There is a real incentive and promo to come participate, but equally, someone of Kendall’s stature and influence, and the way in which this touches the zeitgeist, is inevitably designed to reach a new customer as well.”

Post-game

Incentives like deposit matching may be more useful in retaining customers than traditional Super Bowl-esque strategies like celebrity endorsements, Bakowicz said, and in a year that also includes the Olympics and a World Cup, repeat bettors are a prime target.

“We’ll definitely be measuring to make sure those customers that we brought in and have engaged with us are also here to stay,” Kalvaria said.

BetMGM is particularly focused on the World Cup, Prevost said, given European parent company Entain’s involvement in soccer and BetMGM’s own soccer-specific betting product, ties he described as a “real point of differentiation.” With that said, the company is also focused on upcoming sports tentpoles like March Madness and the NBA and NHL playoffs.

With a packed sports calendar and prediction markets in general heating up, there are more opportunities than ever for sportsbooks to grab the attention—and wallets—of fans, even outside of Super Bowl Sunday. And even though not all the major players are advertising in the game this time around, Bakowicz said he, at least, is betting that there will still be more wagers placed this year than last.

“It seems like their marketing plan[s are] working,” he said.