• by Wayne Friedman , 6 hours ago

Heading into the heavy fall sports TV season, national TV ad spend for sports betting shows DraftKings and FanDuel continue to dominate as the biggest brands -- representing 62.6% of all wagering so far this year, according to estimates from iSpot.

Overall casino and gambling national TV ad spend is up 40% to $269.8 million so far this year versus $193.2 million the year before.

Major sports TV events helped boost overall sports betting -- such as the FIFA World Cup, the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics -- as well as the loosening of legal restrictions around wagering in many states.

DraftKings spent $111.4 million from January 1 through August 27th -- rising almost threefold from a year ago when ad spend totaled $39.5 million. This year it amassed 5.1 billion impressions from 23,851 airings.

FanDuel is in second place at $57.9 million (5.4 billion impressions, and 25,542 airings) compared to the previous year, when it had $69.7 million in ad spend.

In third place is the rapidly rising predication market platform Kalshi, now at $41.4 million in ad spend -- comprising 15.3% of the overall wagering market, from 4.3 billion impressions and 56,719 airings. There were no iSpot estimates of Kalshi ad spend for the same period a year ago.

Polymarket, another prediction platform, is also growing -- now at $7.4 million (a 2.8% share) -- 417.3 million impressions from 545 airings.

Sports wagering in some form is legal in 39 states, and Washington D.C. In addition, "DraftKings Predictions," a predictions/sweepstakes product from DraftKings is as of July this year available in all 50 states.