SharpLink Targets New US Online Gambling Market with Nationwide Affiliate Launch
Since 2019, the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based engagement and conversion specialist SharpLink has been working with a number of sports betting providers, delivering warm and hot leads as part of their gambling affiliate programs in the USA. Now, three years on from its inception, the organization looks to be targeting significant expansion across the country and taking a proactive approach as it assesses future market developments.
At the beginning of November 2022, SharpLink announced the launch of no less than 15 gambling affiliate sites in states across the USA. These states included some of the longer-established gambling markets in the USA, as well as a number of markets that have only recently joined the fray following shifts in state-specific regulation right across the country in the last year. These affiliate websites cover the following jurisdictions – Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Demonstrating SharpLink’s Commitment to Comprehensive Affiliate Dominance in the USA
This is a major statement of intent from SharpLink, but it doesn’t appear to be the limit of their ambitions. The affiliate organization has also announced plans to launch websites focused on future online gambling markets across the USA, including Maryland, Ohio, and Massachusetts – basically, these are markets that are not currently open for business, but which will be open for business in the not-too-distant future. SharpLink appears to be keen to get in on the ground floor in all of these locations, potentially achieving a significant head start on their competitors in the field.
Rather than representing wild speculation on the part of SharpLink, these preemptive moves could turn out to be very shrewd indeed. Both Massachusetts and Ohio look likely to start regulating sports gambling markets in January of next year. Maryland, on the other hand, is expected to permit regulated sports betting within its state boundaries even earlier, beginning in November 2022.
Following on from a Major Recent Acquisition
SharpLink’s significant market moves come off the back of their acquisition of FourCubed for more than $8 million at the end of 2021. FourCubed adopted a similar strategy within the online poker market, and this undoubtedly caught the attention of the SharpLink team. Now, with FourCubed’s Tori Roberts serving in the Vice President of Affiliate Marketing role, SharpLink is ready to do the same thing in the evolving sports gambling affiliate field across the USA.
Rob Phythian, the CEO at SharpLink, described how Tori Roberts is now “leading SharpLink’s Direct-to-Player (D2P) strategy carefully architected to achieve meaningful sports bettor and iGaming engagement and to deliver new user traffic and acquisitions for [their] valued partners.”
It’s often said that fortune favors the bold, and SharpLink’s policy of preemptive moves on potential future markets is certainly a confident one. It’s possible that the company will target further expansion if more state legislatures vote to regulate online gambling within their borders in 2023 and beyond.
