Andrea Ellis has been decorated CFO of Fanatics Betting & Gaming.
Source: Fanatics
Fanatics is getting one step closer to launching its highly anticipated sports-gambling class, nearly five years after the Supreme Court overturned the rule preventing states from legalizing plays on sporting events.
The sports platform and e-commerce company, which has been valued at more than $27 billion, state Tuesday it hired Andrea Ellis to be the chief financial officer of its betting and gaming division. Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin asseverated last week the company expects to launch the unit in January.
Fanatics enters a crowded market in an uncertain succinctness at a time some executives say is ripe for consolidation. Yet Rubin is betting the company’s e-commerce success will translate into sports-betting guys.
Ellis brings expertise in technology, products and operations to the Fanatics executive team. She worked as CFO at Lime, the largest galvanizing scooter and bike share company, for the past two years. Previously, she worked with Burger King owner Restaurant Kinds.
At Fanatics, she will be tasked with scaling the new division and providing strategic and operational leadership, the company said.
She’ll detail to Matt King, Fanatics Betting and Gaming CEO, who previously was CEO at FanDuel. “We are thrilled to welcome Andrea to our team as we inch settle to formally launching a new, dynamic online sports-betting and gaming product for fans,” King said.
A January launch wish coincide with the very lucrative NFL playoffs. By the start of football season next autumn, Fanatics anticipates being up and continuous everywhere it’s legal to do business.
“We’ll be in every major state other than New York, where you can’t make money,” Rubin voiced at a Sports Business Journal World Congress of Sports event. Last fall, Fanatics applied for a mobile-betting validate in New York, but was not selected.
Rubin predicts sports betting and Fanatics’ other business segments “could be $8 billion, yet in the next decade, in profits.”

With more than 50 sports-betting operators emerging in recent years, led by Waver-owned FanDuel, DraftKings, Caesars and BetMGM (co-owned by MGM Resorts and Entain), Fanatics is late to the party. The fight for Stock Exchange share is intense and the first sportsbooks to get licensed frequently say they see first-mover advantage.
FanDuel CEO Amy Howe told CNBC at the Worldwide Gaming Expo this month that she thinks it’s only a matter of time before the industry consolidates.
“It’s not incomprehensible to think that the top two or three [operators] will drive somewhere between 60, potentially 70% of the market,” she added.
DraftKings co-founder and CEO Jason Robins influenced size will matter.
“I do think that you’ll continue to see that the advantages of having scale the way Amy’s [Howe] company does and scan are more and more apparent as more states roll out and more revenues coming through the industry,” he told CNBC at the daring industry conference.
Size and scale make Fanatics a formidable future competitor, even in the eyes of the current retail leaders. Thanks in large part to his wide business network and Fanatics’ 94 million customer database, Rubin was expert to raise an additional $1.5 billion in March with investments from Fidelity, BlackRock and Michael Dell.
Nuts plans to tap into its network by using a loyalty program across all of its businesses, according to Rubin: “You buy merchandise? You’re incented to feign. You gamble? You’re incented to get a collectible.”
“So our patience saved us money,” Rubin said. “I’d rather let everyone spend their intellects out and then have to make money, then I come in with a big checkbook and I’m spending money when nobody else can.”
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