Dive Brief:
- Sightline, a sports betting and casino gaming digital payment provider, said in a press release Thursday that it has chosen the payments unit of JPMorgan Chase as its primary merchant acquirer and payments processor.
- Sightline said it plans to collaborate with JP Morgan Payments to create new products and services that address payment challenges for casinos and their customers. The company said its partnership with the big New York bank will allow consumers to cash out their winnings quicker.
- Today, Sightline’s Play+ service lets users access their funds at about 80 partners across more than 40 states for use in the sports betting, lottery, casino and racing industries. The company, which is also a mobile app developer active in the online gaming arena, currently has more than 1.5 million account holders in the U.S., per the press release.
Dive Insight:
Las Vegas-based Sightline has raked in equity investments over the past year as consumer spending on gambling, especially online gaming and sports betting, surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks partly to the end of a federal ban in 2018.
The company raised $244 million last August, with investments from Cannae Holdings, Genting Group, Point Break Capital Management, and founding investor Walter Kortschak. That followed on the heels of an April infusion of $100 million from Cannae Holdings, Genting Group that fueled spending for hiring, technology and marketing, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Digital gambling, in particular, has seen exponential growth over the past two years. Online gambling revenue alone surpassed $3.7 billion in 2021, a more than seven-fold increase over 2019 and a more than doubling from 2020, according to the American Gaming Association. Overall, the casino gaming industry generated more than $52 billion last year, up 21.4% from 2019 and 76.7% from 2020.
"We’re at a critical point in the gaming industry’s payments ecosystem. J.P. Morgan Payments will help us solve some of the biggest payments challenges our industry faces and provide real solutions to the millions of consumers who enjoy the modern, omnichannel gaming experience,” co-CEO Omer Sattar said in the release.
Sattar, who co-founded the company with Tom Sears in 2012, was appointed to the post last September, sharing the role with Joe Pappano. In a statement, Pappano said the recent equity infusions would support the company’s efforts to create more funding options for customers.
Amid the surge in online gambling, Sightline added new features for customers, too. Last year, the company added cashless gaming to casinos in Nevada, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, enabling casino customers to use their Play+ accounts to fund their gaming without needing cash, per the release.
"At J.P. Morgan Payments, we've seen tremendous growth of digital payments in the gaming industry and we're excited that Sightline has selected our best in class products and services for Play+ payments processing," JP Morgan Payments Managing Director Drew Soinski said in the release.
Meanwhile, over the past few years, other online gambling companies have capitalized on the rise of digital gambling, too. DraftKings, which merged with Diamond Eagle Acquisition Corp. and SBTech in 2019 to go public, expanded into West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey in 2020.
Also, Everi Holdings, a casino and financial tech company, partnered with WinStar World Casino and Resort to introduce the CashClub Wallet. The cashless, contactless payments tool lets users deposit funds and store multiple funding methods.
