DC Council rails against “embarrassing” GambetDC sportsbook failings

The Council of the District of Columbia (DC Council) has lambasted embattled DC sportsbook GambetDC over significant failings it deemed to be “embarrassing” for the district.

Meeting in a roundtable discussion taking place on Wednesday, members of the DC Council voiced concerns about the app, which has endured a torrent of criticism since its launch in 2019.

Powered by Intralot, GambetDC was originally projected to generate north of $6m in revenue in 2021 before ultimately registering a $4m loss for the year.

At the time, DC Lottery officials attributed the missed target to marketing costs, adding the original revenue projections for GambetDC – $6.2m in 2021 and as much as $20m in 2022 – were overinflated on account of “very limited data”.

However, revised estimates have GambetDC bringing in a little under $1.5m in 2022, something which provoked the ire of council members attending the virtual roundtable.

DC Council chair Kenyan McDuffie, who led the roundtable, called on delegates to focus on addressing the failings rather than waiting for its fortunes to turn around.

“From the council’s perspective, this cannot continue,” McDuffie said.

“We cannot continue to scapegoat the pandemic, the Federal enclave and say because we get a greater rate of return on revenue, we should stay the course.

“Getting a greater share of zero is still zero,” he added.

These sentiments were echoed by councilmember Elissa Silverman, who slammed the app’s performance during the NFL season.

“We have an embarrassing sports gambling program right now that can’t even operate well on Super Bowl Sunday,” Silverman commented.

Intralot was awarded a district-wide monopoly on mobile sports betting by the DC Council in 2019 following a $215m no-bid contract, a move which was derided by many, with the contract running until 2024.

Ward three DC councilmember Mary M. Cheh expressed her frustration with the course of sports betting in the district following the launch of GambetDC in 2019.

“I hate to say I told you so but I’m going to. I opposed this contract from the beginning. I said back in 2019, that awarding a contract for exclusive control over mobile sports betting was problematic,” she said.

“We were told we needed a sole source contract to hurry up and beat the other jurisdictions and all this other stuff. It was all nonsense. I also raised doubts about the projected revenue under the contract and look where we are now.”

Councilmember Cheh continued: “We could have gone in the other direction and allowed for competition in this area, and then tax the profits made by competing bidding app vendors.

“But the council was taken in by this idea that this was a special case where a sole source contract had to be made. It’s time to admit that that was wrong and to revisit the entire system.

“There appear to be a number of successful betting apps in other jurisdictions. There’s no reason for us to continue pouring taxpayer dollars into this failing operation,” she added.

Also attending the roundtable discussion was DC Office of Lottery and Gaming executive director Frank Suarez, who after taking aim at fellow DC operators FanDuel and BetMGM, defended GambetDC, suggesting that the operator was finally making it work.

“The ship is righting already,” Suarez said. “GambetDC handle is up significantly this year. The transfer is up, it’s over double what the private operators are providing tax revenue.”

Suarez continued: “Everything points to the right direction and that the model is working as it should now.

“It may have not been working before like we thought, Gambet may have required more investment or a bigger brand building effort than we anticipated, back when we were enacting the law, but now all the numbers show that what we’re doing is the right thing,” he concluded.