And soon fantast sports advertisement will be available on Google., Photo by ©Pixabay Online Betting

Google Will Lift the Ban They Had on Fantasy Sports Ads

By Amelia Walker Senior Content Writer Updated: 18 August 2019

Amelia Walker Senior Content Writer

Amelia Walker is a Senior Content Writer at Betting.US. She has a law degree and deep knowledge of the gambling laws in the United States. Her mission is to keep players informed about responsible gambling, while her passion for sports helps her create useful guides. Amelia has over a decade of experience in betting, which has positioned her as a trusted voice among our readers.

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For several states in the US, the longstanding Google ban on fantasy sports services advertisement will be lifted by the end of the month. This will give media buyers access to wide audiences across platforms such as YouTube, Google Search, and sites that accept fantasy sports ads.

In a policy update that explains the change, Google noted that advertisers will have to meet some creative requirements and must have state licenses to advertise their products in the states they target. They also said that if the state where advertisers operate requires no license, they must have a state license for at least one other state. Media buyers should apply for certification through Google if they are interested in promoting their “real money gaming” services. So far, the company has not made further comments on the matter.

According to the American Gaming Association, during the last year, the overall sports betting market marked an all-time high at $41.7 billion. Mike Raffensperger, the CMO of FanDuel, said that Google was no longer the only digital network to refuse taking advertising dollars from the fantasy sports space. He also said that the company was able to advertise across major networks such as Twitter and Facebook, but the only way to reach American consumers through Google’s networks was by advertising free-to-play games instead of services that offer cash payouts.

It is also notable that Google has been no stranger to sports betting outside of the US. Chris Harrison, who is the head of financial trading and eGaming services at Google said they have a “long and varied history” when it comes to the support of ads for legalized sports wagering in Australian, South American, and European markets. He also said that an ad policy update that was made recently announced similar changes for Indian markets.

Harrison remarked that they were trying to get the right balance between recognizing client needs and protecting users against the unregulated parts of the industry. He further added that they understand they have a role to play when it comes to allowing regulated operators to come up favorably against the unregulated ones.

The sports betting standards remain in flux after more than a year has already passed since the Supreme Court’s repeal of PASPA or the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. It gave a major boost to sports betting countrywide, and more than two dozen states have either fully legalized the practice or plan to have analogous laws on the books in the near future.

It takes a lot of investment into technology and engineering to roll out these changes on a state-by-state, localized level.

said Mike Raffensperger, CMO of FanDuel.

And even though Google might be interested in this opportunity, this is them trying to do things responsibly.

Raffensperger also believes that navigating through state-by-state regulation is quite a handful regardless of the scale on which Google operates. He said this might be the reason that they are taking such company-wide actions just now.

It can be debated whether the new Google policy changes will turn out to be a significant windfall for the company, especially after considering that FanDuel and DraftKings have become very selective regarding the ways they promote their services. These two companies were some of the biggest media spenders in the US only two years ago. Since then, that marketing push helped DraftKings grow to 11 million customers on file, and FanDuel has reached around 8.5 million.