Meet the 22 power players leading the explosion of the US sports betting space

Patrick Keane joined The Action Network as CEO a year ago to help take the firm to the next level. 

The sports-media startup was created by created by The Chernin Group in 2017 with a goal of covering sports gambling like it was a professional sport. It provides smart and accessible analysis and tools, like bet tracking and live odds, for sports gamblers, from beginners through experienced bettors.

Keane, a longtime media exec, has helped The Action Network expand its footprint in the year since, by striking content and other deals with myriad companies, including media brands like Yahoo Sports, sports like Nascar, gaming companies like PointsBet and William Hill, and fantasy sports players like DraftKings.

The Action Network also has a partnership with SiriusXM, where it hosts a daily satellite-radio program for gamblers. 

Under Keane's leadership, company has grown to around 2.1 million monthly active users, up from 1.6 million in October 2018, the company told Business Insider.

It also raised $17.5 million in a series B funding round that closed in February. 

Prior to The Action Network, Keane served on the boards of Gimlet Media and Bleacher Report. He also spent two years as the chief marketing office of CBS Interactive, and four years in marketing at Google, among other roles.

Barstool Sports CEO Erika Nardini is driving the controversial sports brand's push into sports betting with Barstool Bets.

The dedicated content hub for sports gamblers, which launched in September, has live streams starring Barstool's online personalities, round-the-clock programming, free contests where players can win cash prizes, and other content.

Sports gambling talk has been part of Barstool's ethos since it was founded in 2003 as a broadsheet for gamblers and fantasy players.

With the growing adoption of legal sports betting in the US, Nardini and founder Dave Portnoy saw an opportunity to leverage Barstool's audience to corner a piece of the betting market.

Barstool is angling to become the gateway to the nation's sports gamblers to pull in new advertising dollars and other revenue streams like affiliate revenue, Nardini previously told Business Insider. Early ad partners included sportsbooks like PointsBet, FanDuel, and MGM.

Nardini, who joined Barstool as CEO in 2016, has been key to Barstool's overall growth. She helped take the company from a niche blog with 12 employees into a national name that employs more than 200.

Before Barstool, Nardini held executive roles at other digital media companies, including AOL, where she was chief marketing officer, and Yahoo.

Nardini told Digiday that Barstool, which raised $15 million from The Chernin Group last year, aimed to reach $100 million in revenue by 2020. She told Business Insider that she expected sports betting to be a growing part of the company's revenue, starting next year.

Gaming companies are reportedly eyeing Barstool, too. The Big Lead reported earlier this month that The Chernin Group is considering a sale of Barstool Sports to a gaming operator.

Legacy media giant CBS is slowly wading into the sports betting waters, and Jeffrey Gerttula is at the forefront. 

Gerttula, who heads up sports for CBS' digital group, oversaw the launch of CBS' first-ever sports gambling show, "SportsLine Edge," which debuted in 2018 on the network's streaming platform, CBS Sports HQ.

Beyond the streaming show, sports betting has already been a boon for ad dollars on CBS' TV stations in states where betting is legal, CBS' acting CEO Joe Ianniello said at an investor conference in June, The Hollywood Reporter reported. 

"It's already generating millions of dollars of advertising revenue for us," Ianniello, who will continue to oversee CBS after it merges with Viacom this year, said.

Under Gerttula's leadership, CBS is focusing on drawing sports bettors to its digital platforms like CBS Sports HQ and CBSN to grow its ad revenue.

But Ianniello said the company is also talking to partners about a "bigger platform opportunity" if more states continue to legalize sports wagering.

Gerttula isn't in a rush to launch a betting platform. The exec, who has been at the digital arm of CBS Sports for 10 years and spent five years at the the online magazine Sporting News, is weighing the opportunities against the risks.

"We have to be careful that we don't put ourselves in a spot that we come to regret in a few years," Gerttula said, speaking at the Sports Betting USA conference in New York earlier this month. "We're going to be very measured in our approach."

"Make no mistake, this is going to be transformational," he added. "But it's going to be a long game."

Laila Mintas runs her own sports and technology advisory firm, Dr. Mintas Consulting, out of Las Vegas. One of her focuses is helping companies that want to get into sports betting navigate and innovate in the industry.

Many of them are sports tech or general tech companies that see opportunities to build tools to improve the betting experience — from entertaining new game formats to sleeker payment or onboarding processes — or have existing audiences of sports fans and are wondering where gambling fits in.

Mintas is also chair of the advisory board for Bet.Works, a sports-betting tech firm based in the US.

Her focus today is on the US sports betting market, but Mintas also has a wealth of experience in international betting markets like Europe.

Mintas, a lawyer, entered the sports betting space in 2006, after writing her PhD thesis on gambling regulation in Germany. She was later tapped by FIFA to run its sports integrity team, which used data to detect and curb game manipulation. She held similar roles at other sports groups. And, most recently, she was deputy president of the US arm of Sportradar AG, a sports data collection and analysis firm based out of Switzerland.

Today, Mintas wants to help US companies learn from betting markets in Europe, and push the industry forward. She said the US' tech hub could be a big driver of innovation, something many established markets have lacked.

Mintas is interested in areas like data collection and analysis, which could be improved with biometrics and other real-time sports tracking, as well as fan engagement tools. 

"I think that's the future and I see the US leading that," Mintas told Business Insider. "I don't want to copy and paste what's working in Europe. How can you use US tech and US companies that understand US sports to improve the fan experience?"

No sports network, not even the most-watched on US cable TV, can afford to ignore the lift in TV viewership that could come from gamblers now that more states are moving to legalize sports betting.

ESPN's Ilan Ben-Hanan, vice president of programming and acquisitions, has been charting the sports network's careful foray into the sports-betting market for the last year.

Ben-Hanan oversees all of ESPN's sports betting programming, including its daily gambling show, "The Daily Wager," which is a sort of SportsCenter for gamblers. The show airs Monday through Friday on the cable network ESPN2, and recently expanded to Sundays for football season.

Ben-Hanan is an ESPN lifer. He's been with the network in Los Angeles since 2002, a few years after he graduated from the University of Southern California.

He was named in 2017 to his current role, which includes strategic scheduling for all of ESPN's linear channels. He also weighs in on sports-related matters across platforms, and oversees ESPN's relationships with its sister network ABC, and the NHL.

Sports betting programming moved under Ben-Hanan's purview earlier this year.

Four years ago, DraftKings and its chief rival FanDuel were being investigated by the FBI for their daily fantasy sports business models.

Today, they're gobbling up the US market share for sports betting. 

DraftKings, which already had a massive database of sports fans who were interested in gaming through its fantasy sports business, was in one of the best positions to capitalize on sports wagering when the Supreme Court stuck down the federal ban against it last year. 

Cofounder and chief revenue officer Matt Kalish made sure DraftKings could move swiftly once PASPA was overturned.

Under Kalish's leadership, DraftKings was the first to roll out mobile sports betting in New Jersey, beating other casino and online gaming companies to the punch. 

The company took a big risk by starting development on the sports betting platform in late 2017, months before the PASPA ruling came, Kalish told TheLines.com last year.

But it seems to be paying off. While DraftKings is private and isn't thought to be profitable yet, investors in the sports betting space said it is a market-share leader in states it operates in. Today, that also includes West Virginia and Indiana. 

Kalish's role at DraftKings is broader than sports betting. He's the company's designated "game master," overseeing all aspects of its game formats and contests, and pushing for new ways to play, among other responsibilities. 

Kalish worked at companies including Vistaprint, Capital One, Microsoft, and Fidelity, before he cofounded DraftKings with CEO Jason Robins and chief operating officer Paul Liberman in 2012.

Days after the Supreme Court struck down PASPA, Irish gambling giant Paddy Power Betfair announced it was buying FanDuel and combining it with its own US operations, to fuel a push into the US sports betting market. 

Niall Connell, a longtime Paddy Power executive, was put in charge of FanDuel's US bookmaking efforts in August 2018, shortly after the deal closed and FanDuel opened it first sportsbook in New Jersey.

FanDuel launched sportsbooks in five more US states under Connell's leadership. And the company has consistently handled the most bets in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where it is the market-share leader. 

Connell, a Dublin native, spent two years in the US with Paddy Power, now called Flutter Entertainment, before taking the top job at FanDuel's sportsbook arm. He oversaw the Paddy Power's US casino business, and then its TVG cable network for horse racing during that time. Connell also led Paddy Power's casino business in Italy, among other roles, during his nine years at the company back in Europe.

At FanDuel, Connell has been as focused on improving the experience within the betting platform as he has on expanding the sportsbook into new markets.

FanDuel became the first company to live stream games, starting with tennis and European soccer, in a US betting platform earlier this year, through a partnership with Switzerland's Sportradar AG.

Last month, Flutter announced a deal to buy Canadian gaming company, The Stars Group, which powers the US sportsbook, Fox Bet. The companies have not said how the deal will affect FanDuel's sportsbook.

While CBS and ESPN get their feet wet in sports betting, Fox is taking the plunge.

The legacy media company —which recently sold most of its assets, save its broadcast, cable-news, and sports channels — launched earlier this year its own sportsbook, Fox Bet, in partnership with Canadian operator, The Stars Group.

Fox is the only US legacy media company, so far, to make a play for the direct revenue from sports wagering.

Fox Bet CEO Robin Chhabra, a longtime gaming exec, is leading the effort.

Chhabra was a top executive at The Stars Group before moving to Fox Bet. He also spent seven years at European sportsbook operator William Hill prior to that. 

Chhabra isn't targeting hardcore bettors with Fox Bet. He's positioning the platform to appeal to regular sports fans who may want to place a few bucks on their favorite sports teams here or there.

He has pushed to bring betting storylines and other wagering-related topics into the programming on Fox Sports TV channels, in an effort to draw more viewers to the betting platform.

And Chhabra oversees the free-to-play app, Fox Sports Super 6, which is part of the strategy to get sports fans more engaged in live sports overall. The app registered 1 million users as of November, Fox said on its latest earnings call. 

Fox Bet launched in New Jersey and Pennsylvania ahead of football season this year. The company has not revealed how much revenue the platform has brought in. 

The Stars Group recently announced plans to merge with European gaming operator Flutter Entertainment, which owns FanDuel. Fox said on the earnings call that it could create opportunities for Fox Bet to partner with the daily-fantasy-sports company.

Most major US sports leagues were, at best, wary of sports betting and, at worst, adamantly against it before it became apparent that the Supreme Court would lift the federal ban against sports gambling last year.

Since then, many of the leagues have pushed to carve out spaces for themselves within the legal sports betting landscape.

Casey Brett is helping driving that charge at MLB, where sports gambling falls under his purview as senior director of gaming and new business ventures, a team that's run by executive vice president, Kenny Gersh.

Under Gersh's leadership, Brett's biggest focus is getting baseball fans who are already betting on the game through illegal bookies or offshore channels to do so legally, in the newly regulated US markets.

He's helped land deals with gambling operators, including FanDuel, DraftKings, and MGM Resorts International, to license official league data and logos for use in their sportsbooks.

The thinking is that an official MLB presence will send the message to US gamblers that these newly authorized betting platforms are the best ones to use.

"What the leagues really provide value for is validation," Brett said during a panel at the Sports Betting USA conference in November. "We need to be able to transition those people over from the illegal market into the legal market. And the best way to do that — and it's proven with research, it's proven with the numbers — [is] just simply putting a league stamp of approval on an application."

Over time, Brett also hopes the growing base of legal US sports bettors will boost TV ratings for baseball games, thus making MLB's media rights more valuable.

"Ten percent of our existing fan base is already betting in some capacity," Brett said at the conference. "Those people are typically two times more engaged than the average ... Eventually you're going to start to see those numbers start to tick up in terms of overall ratings."

Nascar's Scott Warfield is championing sports betting in a field that has historically had little of it.

Nascar doesn't rank up with US sports like football, basketball, and baseball among the biggest handles in sports wagering.

But Warfield has been watching the sports gambling markets overseas, where live betting makes up the bulk of wagering. He is looking to invent more ways for gamblers to bet on Nascar races, other than traditional wagers on the outcome of a race.

In May 2019, Warfield led a deal between Nascar and sports data and tech company Genius Sports that laid the groundwork for gamblers to eventually be able to bet on any lap, or event, in a race. 

As part of the deal, Genius Bet became the sole provider of official Nascar data to sportsbooks. And Genius Bet planned to the use that data to create a real-time gaming platform with live odds that could allow for different types wagers, including prop bets on events in a race, NBC Sports reported.

Warfield became managing director of Nascar's gaming group that includes sports betting when it was formed a little over a year ago.

He sees sports betting as an opportunity to keep fans watching games for longer, which could potentially drive up the value of the association's media rights, as Business Insider previously reported.

"If we can get our fans to watch for another 15, 30, 45 minutes, obviously, what does that do for Nielsen ratings and then our next TV negotiations in '23, '24?" Warfield said at the Sports Betting USA conference in November. "It's all about engagement."

Before heading up the Nascar's gaming group, Warfield spent four years as managing director of digital and social media, and four years at the broadcast and business communications side of the company.

Following the lead of NBA commissioner Adam Silver, Scott Kaufman-Ross has been one of the most vocal champions of legal sports betting within the big four US leagues — the MLB, NBA, NHL, and NFL. 

Kaufman-Ross has lobbied hard, alongside other NBA officials, to make sure the league is involved when any US state moves to legalize sports betting, and to get a cut of the betting revenue through data and other deals.

"We're saying, if you choose to take up that legislation, the leagues are key stakeholders and we should be a part of that conversation," Kaufman-Ross told The Action Network last year. "Our view is that betting is happening on our sport and therefore we should participate in the revenue that's generated on the back of our competitions."

The NBA, under Kaufman-Ross's leadership, became the first in the US to partner with a gaming company, when the league struck a deal to license official data and logos to MGM Resorts in July 2018.

Kaufman-Ross aggressively pursued other deals since then, including similar partnerships with sportsbooks Fox Bet, FanDuel, and William Hill.  

He's also tried to leverage those relationships to access betting data that the league can use to watch for suspicious betting activity across state lines. The NBA has asked operators to share anonymized betting data, Kaufman-Ross told The Action Network. 

Kaufman-Ross has been at the NBA for eight years, most recently as senior vice president and head of its fantasy and gaming group. He also spent a few years on the global strategy team, among other roles. He was research analyst at Goldman Sachs before that. 

Basketball is one of the most popular sports to bet on in the US, including the NBA and college basketball.

David Preschlack oversees NBC Sports Group's sports betting push, as president of its regional networks and executive vice president of content strategy for the overall sports group.

Preschlack helped launch in 2018 the free-to-play betting app, NBC Sports Predictor, which has helped get regular sports fans accustomed to making picks during live games, even in states where sports gambling is not yet legal.

App users can attempt to predict what will happen each week in Sunday Night Football, Premier League, Nascar, and Golf matchups, for a chance to win cash prizes.

Like CBS Sports, NBC Sports is starting to see sports betting's impact on advertising revenue.

Gambling has brought in a wave of new advertisers for NBC's regional sports networks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Washington, DC; and Boston, Massachusetts, the company said.

Betting companies like William Hill US, DraftKings, and FanDuel are buying up ads in NBA and NHL games and shoulder programming in those markets, the company said. More sports betting ads are starting to enter NBC Sports Chicago now that betting is legal in the neighboring state of Iowa. 

Preschlack, who lives in Connecticut, joined NBC Sports Group in 2016, three years before the sports betting market opened up in the US.

He came by way of the Walt Disney Company, where he ran affiliate sales and marketing for Disney and ESPN Networks Group, among other roles. His very first job at ESPN, back in 1995, was as a videotape librarian. 

Soccer is the most the popular sport to bet on in Europe. In the US, it's the NFL. 

The NFL, which didn't warm up to sports betting in the way other leagues like the NBA did, is increasingly moving the conversation forward now that more states are taking up legal betting. 

Jocelyn Moore, the NFL's head of communications and public affairs, is driving that effort. 

Moore, who has been with the NFL for three years, has been lobbying on behalf of the NFL on sports wagering matters since before PASPA was overturned in the US.

After the ruling, she helped craft the NFL's guiding principles for sports betting, which were released by commissioner Roger Goodell in May 2018. She also testified last September before Congress in favor of a federal regulation for legalized sports betting, rather than leaving it to the states.

But, since then, Moore has been more active at the state level, pushing states like Tennessee and Indiana to require sportsbooks to use official league data and limit certain kinds of bets, among other efforts.

Prior to her football career, Moore was a staffer on the US Senate for 15 years.

David Lehanski is spearheading the NHL's sports betting play. 

Hockey hasn't historically been a huge draw for gamblers in the US, namely in the state Nevada, one of the few areas where sports gambling was legal up until 18 months ago. 

But Lehanski, like Warfield at Nascar, has been exploring ways the league can get more involved in betting. 

As executive vice president of business development and innovation for the league, Lehanski is looking at how in-play data can engage fans during hockey games.

Hockey is a fast-paced sport. So, the league has started ripping data off the the ice in the hopes of ultimately using it to enable more prop bets.  

"We are the only ones that can extract this data and collect," Lehanski said at the Sports Betting USA conference in November. "So we feel like we're in a pretty good place to add a ton of value for sports fans."

Working with chief business officer Keith Wachtel, Lehanski also spearheaded deals with sportsbook operators including MGM, William Hill US, and FanDuel to license its official league data and logos. 

Where leagues like the NBA and MLB initially lobbied states to require sportsbooks to use official data, the NHL proved itself the most willing to work directly with gaming companies, as most leagues now are, Sports Business Daily reported. 

Business tycoon Ted Leonsis is trying to launch the first sportsbook inside of a US sports arena. 

His holding company Monumental Sports and Entertainment — which owns the Capital One arena in Washington, DC, as well as the Capitals hockey, Wizards men's basketball, and Mystics women's basketball teams that play at the arena — signed a deal in October with bookmaker William Hill US to bring a sportsbook into the arena. 

Monumental will lease a space in the arena to William Hill for the sportsbook. The deal is part of a broader effort to reach younger, tech-savvy fans, the Washington Post reported.

Sports betting became legal in DC late last year but is still not live in the district. If William Hill's sportsbook is approved by local regulators, it could be the first to roll out in the area, not just the arena.

Leonsis was in a prime position to jump into the sports betting space as soon as the district moved to legalize it, because of Monumental's vast local sports properties.

The business magnate, whose net worth is estimated at $1 billion, built his early fortune by selling the technology magazine he founded, LIST, to Thomson Reuters for $40 million in 1984. He was a longtime exec at AOL during its heyday.

Johnny Aitken is planting a flag for Australian online gaming company, PointsBet, in the US sports betting market.

Aitken was picked to lead the international gambling outfit's US arm in late 2018, a few months ahead of company's US launch.

He oversaw PointsBet's rollout of its first US sportsbook, in New Jersey, and its first-ever retail sportsbook, in Iowa. He also recently opened a second US office in Colorado, as PointsBet prepares to expand into other states including Colorado and Illinois.

While many online gaming companies have landed in the US in the last 18 months, PointsBet is one of a handful, including Bet365, that owns its full tech stack. Owning the infrastructure can make its easier and faster for operators to customize and roll out their platforms.

Aitken, who was briefly chief operating officer of PointsBet in Australia before taking on the chief role overseeing its US operations, comes from the gambling world.

He spent nearly four years at bookmaker William Hill, in Australia, during which time he helped boost betting on NBA games with new products and promotions. He also spent four years as a bookmaker at Tom Waterhouse, where he learned the ins and outs of handling bets.

Melissa Riahei runs the US arm of SBTech, a major supplier of sports betting technology in Europe that is now making a land grab in the US.

Riahei, who comes from the US lottery and gaming industries, started advising SBTech in early 2018, before the repeal of PASPA.

She was named president of SBTech's US operations this month, after helping the company launch platforms six US states in the last 18 months, including New Jersey and, more recently, Oregon.

Riahei, who has a background in law, has an intimate working knowledge of the US gaming market.

She began her career as an attorney in Illinois, a state that makes a big chunk of its revenue from gaming, such as river boat casinos, horse racing, and the state lottery. While working for the Illinois governor's office and as general counsel for the state lottery, Riahei was instrumental in challenging an interpretation of The Federal Wire Act that prevented states from selling lottery tickets online. (The US Department of Justice ultimately changed its interpretation in a 2011 opinion that led to a boon for online poker and gambling.) She also held executive roles at two online gaming companies before devoting her attention to sports betting.

SBTech is just one of the companies that supplies tech to sportsbook operators in the US. Its competitors include Kambi, startup Bet.Works, and gaming industry giants like IGT and Scientific Games.

Riahei told Business Insider that SBTech wants to distance itself from its rivals by customizing its approach to each market.

In places like Oregon, where the state lottery controls the sports betting licenses, it could build a product that's designed to introduce lottery players to sports gambling, for example. SBTech also has products for bettors of skill levels, as well as recreational bettors. Riahei also said there could be an opportunity to build products that appeal to women.

"The way that US sports bettors behave or respond to markets is going to be a little bit different than what we've seen in Europe," Riahei said. "The key here is to really take a good look at what's happening in each state — the numbers, the trends, the data ... and come up with customizable solutions."

William Funk is leading Turner Sports' sports betting strategy across all of its sports properties, from its TV channels to the digital-media brand, Bleacher Report. 

As head of sports partnerships and branded content, Funk oversees gaming-related partnerships across Turner's league and property rights. That includes Turner's deal with Caesars Entertainment, which features a Bleacher Report content studio within the sportsbook of Caesars' flagship Las Vegas hotel. Funk has a hand Bleacher Report's gambling vertical, B/R Betting, too.

He has been experimenting with bringing gambling into Turner programming for about year now, since Turner integrated betting information from MGM into its pay-per-view broadcast of "The Match: Tiger vs. Phil."  

Funk is looking to strike more deals with betting partners across AT&T's portfolio, since he coordinates closely with the broader WarnerMedia unit and its telecom parent, AT&T.

One day, Funk thinks gambling could even seep into other types of programming.

"Do people want to bet on an outcome of a 'Game of Thrones'?" Funk said in Variety earlier this year. "It's a lot harder with a scripted show, because there are issues in terms of things getting out, but yes, I think you will see betting is something that will be integrated across other genres of programming, for sure."

Funk has been Turner Sports for 17 years, and was at the NBA before that.

Canadian media maven John Levy is leveraging his digital sports brand, theScore, to break into the US sports betting market. 

TheScore, which publishes news and stats on major US sports like football and basketball, launched its own sportsbook, theScore Bet, in New Jersey this fall. 

TheScore's betting app and media platform link back to one another so that users can find sports information in the media app and then go directly to the betting platform to place wagers. Levy is also exploring other ways to evolve how sports are presented within betting apps.

The operation blurs the lines between sports media and betting platforms even more than rival offerings like Fox Bet.

While sports wagering is a new business for theScore, media is not.

TheScore was spun in 2012 out of legacy TV company, Score Media, which was founded by Levy in 1999 under a different corporate name.

Levy — whose son, Benjie Levy, is the company's chief operating officer — also ran his family's cable company, Hamilton's Western Co-Axial, before starting his own firm.

Brian Musburger founded one of the first media startups to go all-in on US sports betting, Vegas Stats and Information Network (VSIN).

Musburger, a former talent agent — and nephew of the sports broadcaster Brent Musburger — moved his family from Chicago to the gambling capital of the US, Las Vegas, to start the media company dedicated to sports bettors, in January 2017.

Musburger wants VSiN to be the authority on sports gambling information in the US. He started the company, in part because he, as a casual sports gambler, struggled to find credible sources of gaming information that weren't influenced by unregulated offshore sportsbooks that had their own agendas.

The startup now has sports-betting channels on streaming-TV services like Sling TV and FuboTV; a satellite-radio station on SiriusXM; content on networks like the MSG Network; and video on its own website and mobile app, for which it also sells subscriptions. 

Since the May 2018 PASPA decision, Musburger has also been exploring the idea of alternative sports broadcasts that cater to gamblers, and working to educate the next generation of bettors who are discovering gaming as it goes mainstream.

VSiN is facing more competition daily from digital media companies like The Action Network and Barstool Sports' Bets vertical, as well as the legacy media giants that are moving in sports betting, like Fox and ESPN.

But Musburger said more major advertisers, including big auto, alcohol, and insurance brands, are paying more attention to platforms like VSiN.

"All of those folks ignored us in the beginning, and we're having discussions with every one of those categories now," Musburger previously told Business Insider. "One of the biggest byproducts of the decision was really the comfort that advertisers were able to have with the space."

If you've been wondering when Yahoo Sports was going to jump into the gambling fray, the answer is now. 

Yahoo Sports general manager Geoff Reiss architected the company's first big move into sports betting earlier this month, with the launch of a new platform that connects to the online sportsbook, BetMGM.

The platform, called Yahoo Sportsbook, offers betting odds and other content to users nationwide, and those within states where sports gambling is legal can click through to place bets on BetMGM. Currently, the feature to place bets on BetMGM is only live in New Jersey.

Reiss, who told Business Insider he has been plotting a move into sports gambling for two years, said the platform is a "small baby step" for Yahoo Sports.

Legal gambling presents a big opportunity for media companies to diversify their revenue beyond advertising, he said.

The deal with BetMGM, for example, is an affiliate relationship where Yahoo Sports presumably gets a commission for sending players to BetMGM. Reiss declined to reveal the terms of the deal.

Like daily-fantasy-sports companies DraftKings and FanDuel, Yahoo Sports is already sitting on a trove of sports fans, including many who enjoy gaming, thanks to its popular sports content and fantasy sports platforms. Yahoo Sports also has the backing of parent company, Verizon, whose investments in 5G could one day be used to solve some of the latency issues that are holding back mobile betting. 

For now, Reiss is focused on bringing Yahoo Sports content closer to the betting experience, like in the partnership with BetMGM.

Reiss joined Yahoo Sports about two years ago. Before that, he advised and worked for various digital media companies. He also spent a year at Twitter Sports.

If you've made to the end of this list, you've probably seen the name William Hill appear more than a few times. 

The British sports bookmaker, which has thousands of betting shops in the UK, is vying to dominate sports betting in the US, too, under the leadership of chief executive Joe Asher.

Asher has led William Hill's US business since 2012, when his startup Brandywine Bookmaking was acquired by the betting giant.

For much of that time, William Hill US was focused on sports betting in pockets of the country, like Nevada, where wagering was already legal, as well as horse racing and other gaming. (William Hill US currently operates 113 race and sports books in Nevada, and recently signed a deal to expand its footprint even further.)

Over the last 18 months, William Hill has spread swiftly in other states that have legalized sports gambling.

• It launched the first sportsbook outside of Nevada, at New Jersey's Monmouth Park racetrack.
• It has numerous sportsbooks in Iowa.
• It's partnering with Leonsis' Monumental Sports and Entertainment on what could be the country's first in-arena betting operation.
• And it has promotional partnerships with hockey teams including the Vegas Golden Knights and New Jersey Devils.

Asher started his career at several race tracks, where he was even a track announcer for a time, before going to law school. 

Ethan Miller / Getty Images

The sports betting market in the US is still taking shape. There will be other companies to watch in the coming year, including:

• Data analysis and collection firms like Sportradar
• US casino operators like MGM Resorts that are racing to launch sportsbooks
• International gaming companies like British bookmakers 888 Holdings and Bet365
• Suppliers like International Game Technologies and Scientific Games that deliver pieces of technology to gaming companies, such as kiosks for betting on the casino floor, or pricing and trading tools