Sportsbook Customer Acquisition Costs: The 2026 Data

Every legal sportsbook in the United States is fighting for the same finite pool of new bettors, and the price of winning that fight is one of the least transparent numbers in the industry. Public companies like DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment (FanDuel's parent) disclose total sales and marketing spend in their quarterly filings, but they rarely break out a clean customer acquisition cost (CAC) per depositing player. This article pulls together the disclosed marketing budgets, promotional-credit data, and third-party CAC estimates that do exist, and lines them up so operators, analysts, journalists, and students of the gambling industry can see, in one place, roughly what it costs a sportsbook to acquire a single active bettor in 2026 — and how dramatically that number has fallen since the 2021-2022 "land grab" era.

Key Findings

DraftKings and FanDuel/Flutter each spent more than $1.2 billion on sales and marketing in 2024, but that fell to 22–26.5% of revenue, down from open-ended spending during 2021-2022 launches. Industry estimates put per-player CAC at $250–$750 depending on state competitiveness, against an estimated two-to-three-year lifetime value of $1,200–$1,800. Promotional credits alone consumed 35–82% of gross gaming revenue in newly launched states like Pennsylvania and Michigan. Sports betting TV ad units are down 27% from their 2021 peak, even as total commercial gaming revenue hit a record $78.72 billion in 2025.

What "Customer Acquisition Cost" Means in Sports Betting

Customer acquisition cost is the total sales-and-marketing spend a sportsbook incurs, divided by the number of new depositing customers it converts in a given period. In practice, U.S. operators bundle several very different expense lines into that figure: national and local sportsbook promos such as deposit matches and "bet $5, get $150" offers; affiliate and media-buy costs; national television and streaming ad campaigns; and — increasingly — retention marketing aimed at existing customers rather than new ones. Because promotional credits are booked as a deduction against gross gaming revenue rather than as a marketing expense on some operators' income statements, published "sales and marketing" percentages and true CAC are related but not identical numbers, which is part of why estimates vary so widely between sources.

Why CAC Matters More in 2026 Than in 2021

When only a handful of states had legal online sports betting, operators treated acquisition spend as a land-grab expense — the goal was market share at almost any cost, financed by venture and public-market capital. With legal betting now live in roughly 38 states plus D.C., most large addressable markets are already open, so incremental growth increasingly has to come from either new-state launches (a shrinking pool) or from getting more value out of an existing customer base. That shift is precisely what is pushing operators to report acquisition costs as a disciplined percentage of revenue rather than an unbounded war chest.

How Much Do Sportsbooks Actually Spend on Marketing?

The clearest public data comes from audited 2024 filings of the three largest publicly traded operators active in U.S. sports betting.

Those percentages mark a structural change from the earliest years of legal mobile betting. In its most recent Q1 2026 results, Flutter reported total group sales and marketing spend of $966 million, up 15% year-over-year from $840 million in Q1 2025 — but that increase tracked a 17% rise in group revenue to $4.304 billion, meaning marketing intensity as a share of revenue actually held roughly flat. Flutter's U.S. segment marketing spend was $379 million in the quarter, essentially flat year-over-year (+1%) against U.S. segment revenue of $1.763 billion, split between $1.144 billion in sportsbook revenue (+1%) and $564 million in iGaming revenue (+19%).

The 2021–2022 Land Grab vs. Today's Discipline

To understand how far unit economics have moved, it helps to compare current spending discipline against the peak of the state-by-state launch race:

• Caesars launched its national sportsbook push with a reported $1 billion marketing commitment in 2021, later cut by more than 75% once the company pivoted toward profitability.
• FanDuel spent an estimated $1 billion on marketing in 2022 alone, a figure that would represent roughly 14% of FanDuel's entire 2025 revenue of $6.9 billion if repeated today.
• DraftKings spent $197.5 million on sales and marketing in Q2 2022 alone — a single-quarter figure that is now a meaningfully smaller share of a much larger revenue base.

DraftKings executives have since specifically credited "national advertising" leverage — rather than expensive local, state-by-state campaigns — for lowering customer acquisition costs in newer markets such as Ohio, Maryland, and Kansas, since a single national ad buy can now acquire customers across dozens of already-live states simultaneously rather than requiring a fresh local campaign for every launch.

Promotional Credits: The Hidden Acquisition Cost

Marketing line items only tell part of the story, because promotional bonus credits — free bets, deposit matches, and odds boosts — are frequently booked separately as a deduction from gross gaming revenue rather than as an advertising expense. Early state-level data illustrates just how large that hidden acquisition cost can be:

Over a full 12 months in Pennsylvania, promotional spend totaled $116 million against $337 million in gross gaming revenue — 35% of GGR consumed by bonus credits alone. In Michigan's first four months of legal online betting, promotional spend reached 82% of gross gaming revenue, an extreme figure typical of a brand-new market where every operator is trying to lock in early adopters before habits form. A Deutsche Bank analysis of this same period found that DraftKings and FanDuel generated roughly 60% more betting handle per promotional dollar than the average of BetMGM and Barstool — evidence that acquisition efficiency, not just raw spend, separates market leaders from the rest of the field. That efficiency gap showed up directly in market share: when Barstool scaled back its promotional offers to standard levels, its Michigan market share fell from 23% to 13%.

Estimated Cost Per Acquisition and Player Lifetime Value

Because no major operator publishes a clean, audited CAC-per-player figure, industry analysts rely on modeled estimates built from disclosed marketing spend and estimated new-depositor counts. The most commonly cited current range puts cost per acquisition (CPA) at $250 to $750 per new depositing customer, varying by how competitive a given state's market is — a newly legalized state with five or six operators launching simultaneously sits at the high end, while mature markets with two or three entrenched brands sit lower. Against that acquisition cost, the same modeling estimates a player's lifetime value at $1,200 to $1,800 over a two-to-three-year horizon in established markets, implying that for every $1 million an operator spends on acquisition, it can expect roughly $4 million to $7 million in lifetime value back over that window — the unit economics that let public operators justify continued marketing spend even after cutting it sharply from 2021-2022 peaks.

Those figures should be read as directional industry estimates rather than audited numbers; operators do not disclose a standardized CAC metric, and estimates from different analysts can vary by a factor of two or three depending on methodology and which cost lines are included.

Retreating From Peak Advertising: What the TV Data Shows

Television advertising data, tracked independently of company financial statements, shows one of the clearest signs of acquisition-spending discipline. Sports betting television ad units fell 9% year-over-year in 2025 and are now down 27% from the category's 2021 peak — roughly half as many ad units airing as during the initial legalization rush. Category-wide gambling TV advertising was down 4% from 2024 levels, and total sports betting TV spend in 2024 was approximately $666 million, representing less than 1% of all national TV advertising spend. For context on how small a footprint that still is relative to other heavily advertised categories, the same tracking found that for every sports betting commercial that aired, viewers saw more than four telecom/wireless ads and 39 pharmaceutical ads.

Regulatory Pressure on Promotional Deductions

The scale of promotional spending has drawn direct legislative attention. Several states that initially let operators deduct 100% of promotional credits from taxable gross gaming revenue have phased those deductions down or eliminated them entirely, arguing that unlimited bonus deductions let operators shelter revenue from state gaming taxes indefinitely. That policy shift is one reason operators have been steadily reducing headline promotional intensity since 2022 even in mature markets — the tax treatment of a promotional dollar today is meaningfully less favorable than it was during initial launch windows, on top of the underlying business case for capping acquisition spend once a market matures. For readers tracking this policy trend across all 50 states, DeucesCracked's state-by-state sports betting hub and sports betting learning center track legal status and market structure as it evolves.

Methodology

Figures in this article were compiled from audited public-company financial disclosures (DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment quarterly and annual filings), American Gaming Association research publications including State of the States 2026 and the 2025 Sports Betting Advertising Trends report, and third-party industry analyses from Legal Sports Report, BettingUSA, and Business of Apps that aggregate state gaming-commission data and equity-analyst research (including cited Deutsche Bank estimates). Where a figure represents a third-party model rather than an audited company disclosure — such as the $250–$750 CPA range and $1,200–$1,800 LTV range — that distinction is noted in the text. All dollar figures are as originally reported by the source and have not been inflation-adjusted. No statistic in this article was estimated or fabricated by DeucesCracked; every figure traces to one of the sources listed below.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good customer acquisition cost for a sportsbook?

Based on current industry estimates, a CAC in the $250–$500 range is considered efficient in a mature, less-competitive state, while $600–$750 is more typical in a newly launched market with several operators competing for the same early adopters simultaneously.

Why did sportsbook marketing spending fall after 2022?

Most large addressable states had already legalized online betting by 2023, shrinking the pool of "new market" launches that justified land-grab-style spending. Public-market pressure for profitability, plus state-level tax changes that reduced the deductibility of promotional credits, pushed operators toward marketing spend disciplined to roughly 22–26.5% of revenue rather than open-ended budgets.

What percentage of sportsbook revenue goes to promotional credits?

It varies enormously by market maturity: newly launched states have seen promotional spend reach 35–82% of gross gaming revenue in the first year, while mature markets with established customer bases run substantially lower as bonus offers shift from acquisition to retention.

Is DraftKings or FanDuel more efficient at acquiring customers?

Based on a Deutsche Bank analysis of combined Pennsylvania and Michigan data, DraftKings and FanDuel generated roughly 60% more betting handle per promotional dollar than the average of BetMGM and Barstool during the period studied, suggesting greater acquisition efficiency among the two market-share leaders.

How is customer acquisition cost different from promotional spend?

Promotional spend (bonus credits, free bets, deposit matches) is one component of total acquisition cost. Full CAC also includes national and local advertising, media buys, and affiliate marketing costs — expense lines that are typically reported separately from promotional deductions in operator financial statements.

If you use data from this article, please link back to https://www.deucescracked.com/blog/sportsbook-customer-acquisition-cost-data.

Sources

• American Gaming Association: Commercial Gaming Revenue Hits $78.7 Billion in 2025
• American Gaming Association: 2025 Sports Betting Advertising Trends
• Flutter Entertainment Q1 2026 Financial Results
• Legal Sports Report: DraftKings on Lowered Marketing and Customer Acquisition Costs
• BettingUSA: How Long Can US Sportsbooks Pump the Promotional Spending Well?
• Business of Apps: FanDuel Revenue and Usage Statistics
• Scaleo: How Much Sportsbooks Spend on Marketing

Curious how sportsbooks translate this spending into offers you can actually claim? Compare current deals on our sportsbook promo comparison page, or explore the broader sports betting hub for legal-state guides and operator reviews. For the numbers behind the games themselves, DeucesCracked's research blog publishes new data studies like this one regularly.