The sportsbook app on your phone probably has a European parent. FanDuel, the biggest legal sportsbook in the country by revenue, started life in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is now wholly owned by Flutter Entertainment, the group behind Paddy Power, Betfair and Sky Bet. Half of BetMGM belongs to Entain, which owns Ladbrokes and Coral. Caesars Sportsbook was built on William Hill’s American business. And bet365 is still run by a family from Stoke-on-Trent, England.
There’s a reason for that. Britain and Ireland had legal, nationwide sports betting for decades before the Supreme Court struck down PASPA in May 2018, so their bookmakers arrived with trading desks, technology and cash already in place. The UK is still where new betting brands get started. One national license covers all of Great Britain, and a quick look at the latest UK bookmaker launches shows new sites arriving there most months. In the US, where every state writes its own rules, a genuinely new sportsbook is a rare event.
Here’s who owns each of the major US sportsbooks in 2026, how they got there, and what that ownership means when you place a bet.
Quick answer: who owns the big US sportsbooks?
| Sportsbook | Owner in 2026 | Where the owner is based | Related brands |
| FanDuel | Flutter Entertainment (100%) | Registered in Dublin, Ireland; run from New York | Paddy Power, Betfair, Sky Bet, PokerStars |
| DraftKings | Public company (Nasdaq: DKNG); CEO Jason Robins controls about 88% of the vote | Boston, Massachusetts | Golden Nugget Online Gaming, Jackpocket |
| BetMGM | 50/50 joint venture of MGM Resorts and Entain | Las Vegas and London | Ladbrokes, Coral, bwin (Entain) |
| Caesars Sportsbook | Caesars Entertainment (Nasdaq: CZR) | Reno, Nevada | Formerly William Hill US |
| bet365 | The Coates family (private) | Stoke-on-Trent, England | bet365 worldwide, Stoke City FC |
| Fanatics Sportsbook | Fanatics Betting & Gaming | United States | Took over PointsBet’s US business |
| theScore Bet | Penn Entertainment (Nasdaq: PENN) | Wyomissing, Pennsylvania | Replaced ESPN Bet on Dec. 1, 2025 |
| Hard Rock Bet | Seminole Tribe of Florida, via Hard Rock International | Florida | Hard Rock hotels and casinos |
| BetRivers | Rush Street Interactive (NYSE: RSI) | Chicago, Illinois | Rivers casinos (brand license) |
Four of those nine have British or Irish roots, including the market leader. FanDuel took 39% of US sportsbook gross gaming revenue in the second quarter of 2026, according to Flutter’s own results.
Who owns FanDuel?
Flutter Entertainment owns 100% of FanDuel. It took full control in July 2025 by buying the roughly 5% stake held by Boyd Gaming for $1.755 billion, a deal that valued FanDuel at $31 billion.
FanDuel was founded in Edinburgh in 2009 by Nigel Eccles, Lesley Eccles, Tom Griffiths, Rob Jones and Chris Stafford. It began as a daily fantasy site that grew out of a news-prediction startup called Hubdub, and it’s now headquartered in New York. When the Supreme Court ruling landed in 2018, Paddy Power Betfair moved fast. It merged its American business into FanDuel in exchange for a 61% stake, and the deal closed that July.
Paddy Power Betfair renamed itself Flutter in 2019, added Sky Bet through its 2020 merger with The Stars Group, and kept buying FanDuel. In December 2020 it agreed to pay $4.175 billion for the 37.2% held by a KKR-led investor group, which took it to 95%. Boyd’s stake was the last piece.
One loose end remains. Fox holds a call option, running until December 2030, to buy 18.6% of FanDuel. Fox’s 2025 annual report put the price at about $4.5 billion, and Fox would first need its own gambling licenses to use it.
So is FanDuel British? Not quite. It was born in Scotland, its parent is registered in Ireland, and both are now run from New York. Flutter moved its operational headquarters there and made the New York Stock Exchange its primary listing in 2024.
2026 has been a busy year at the top. Amy Howe left as FanDuel CEO in May and was replaced by company president Christian Genetski. At Flutter, group CEO Peter Jackson stepped down on September 30 and Dan Taylor took over on October 1. In August, Flutter cut its 2026 forecast for FanDuel’s adjusted earnings (EBITDA) to $760 million from $970 million, mostly to fund bigger bonuses and promotions.
Who owns DraftKings?
DraftKings has no parent company. DraftKings Inc. is a US public company, listed on Nasdaq as DKNG and based in Boston. Big institutions hold most of its Class A shares. Vanguard alone held about 7.5% in the company’s 2026 proxy filing.
Control is a different matter. Co-founder and CEO Jason Robins holds every Class B share, which gives him about 88% of the total voting power even though he owns only around 2% of the Class A stock. If you want one name for who owns DraftKings in practice, it’s Robins.
Robins started the company in 2012 with Matt Kalish and Paul Liberman as FanDuel’s daily fantasy rival. DraftKings went public in April 2020 through a three-way, $3.3 billion merger with a SPAC called Diamond Eagle and SBTech, a European betting-technology firm. It has since bought Golden Nugget Online Gaming and the lottery app Jackpocket.
Does Jerry Jones own DraftKings? No. Investment firms tied to Jones and to Patriots owner Robert Kraft put money in during the daily fantasy years, and Jones publicly defended his stake in 2015. Neither owns or controls the company.
DraftKings nearly went the other way. In September 2021 it offered $22.4 billion for Entain, the owner of Ladbrokes and Coral, then walked away a month later.
DraftKings posted its first full-year net profit in 2025, a modest $3.7 million on $6.05 billion of revenue. It slipped to a $67.6 million loss in the second quarter of 2026, which it put down to bettor-friendly results and heavier promotional spending. Like FanDuel, it launched a prediction-markets app in December 2025. DraftKings Predictions followed its purchase of Railbird, a CFTC-licensed exchange.
Who owns BetMGM?
BetMGM is a 50/50 joint venture between MGM Resorts International and Entain, set up in 2018. Entain, formerly GVC Holdings, is a London-listed group that owns Ladbrokes, Coral, bwin and partypoker.
MGM has tried to own all of it. In January 2021 it made an all-share approach for Entain worth about £8.1 billion (roughly $11 billion), which Entain rejected as too low. That deal would have handed MGM full control of BetMGM. The venture now pays its owners: MGM received $135 million in distributions from it in 2025.
Most US bettors don’t know there’s also a BetMGM in Britain, and it isn’t part of the joint venture. MGM launched BetMGM UK by itself in August 2023, on the platform of LeoVegas, the Swedish operator it bought the year before. So the traffic now runs both ways: an American casino brand that launched as one of Britain’s new betting sites.
Who owns Caesars Sportsbook?
Caesars Entertainment owns Caesars Sportsbook. The Reno-based casino group bought all of William Hill in April 2021, for about £2.9 billion, because it wanted the American business. It then agreed in September 2021 to sell everything outside the US, including the British betting shops, to 888 Holdings for about £2.2 billion.
Caesars relaunched William Hill’s US app as Caesars Sportsbook later in 2021. 888 renamed itself evoke in 2024 and still runs William Hill in the UK. A William Hill account in London and a Caesars account in New Jersey share a history, but they haven’t shared an owner for years.
Who owns bet365?
The Coates family owns bet365. Among the British giants it’s the exception: no stock market listing and no private equity. Denise Coates founded it in Stoke-on-Trent in 2000. She remains majority shareholder and joint CEO alongside her brother John, and her sisters Moira and Siobhan each hold about 5%. The family has also controlled Stoke City FC since 2006.
bet365 entered the US through New Jersey in 2019. By October 2026 it was live in around 18 states plus Washington, DC, according to state availability trackers. Reports in 2025 said the family was weighing a full or partial sale, but the Coates family still owns it.
Who owns Fanatics, theScore Bet, Hard Rock Bet and BetRivers?
These are the American-owned books.
Fanatics Sportsbook belongs to Fanatics Betting & Gaming, part of Michael Rubin’s Fanatics. It got into most of its states by taking over the US business of Australian operator PointsBet for $225 million. The deal was completed in April 2024, after DraftKings tried to outbid it.
theScore Bet is owned by Penn Entertainment. It replaced ESPN Bet on December 1, 2025, after Penn and ESPN ended their partnership early. Penn had bought theScore, a Toronto sports-media company, for about $2 billion in 2021. If you had an ESPN Bet account, it’s now a theScore Bet account.
Hard Rock Bet is owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida, which bought Hard Rock International for about $965 million in 2007. Under the tribe’s 2021 gaming compact, it’s the only legal online sportsbook in Florida and has been live statewide since December 2023.
BetRivers is run by Rush Street Interactive, a Chicago company listed on the NYSE. Co-founder Neil Bluhm holds 77% of its Class V voting stock, according to a 2026 SEC filing.
Why Britain gets new betting sites every month and the US doesn’t
Ownership explains why the big US books look the way they do. Licensing explains why the UK market keeps producing new names while the US mostly doesn’t. UK and US betting sites differ in plenty of other ways as well, from odds formats to bonuses, but these four things drive the number of launches.
One license versus dozens of rulebooks
In Great Britain, the Gambling Commission licenses operators for the whole country. Get that license, or launch on a platform that already holds one, and you can take bets from Cornwall to the Scottish Highlands. In the US, sports betting is legal in some form in 39 states plus Washington, DC and Puerto Rico, according to DraftKings’ latest quarterly filing. Every one of those jurisdictions sets its own rules, tax rates and license limits.
US licenses are scarce
Many states tie online licenses to casinos, tribes or pro teams, and some cap the number. Florida has one online sportsbook. Rhode Island had a single operator until it tentatively awarded Bally’s a second license in May 2026. Wisconsin legalized mobile betting in April 2026 but limited it to the state’s tribes. That’s why the “newest” sportsbook in America is often just a rename, like theScore Bet.
White-label platforms make UK launches quick
Plenty of new UK sites don’t build their own technology. They run on white-label platforms from companies such as White Hat Gaming and ProgressPlay, which supply the license, payments and games while the new brand handles marketing. UK launch trackers listed more than 20 new betting and casino brands in the first nine months of 2026, and many of them sit on the same handful of platforms.
UK rules are tighter, and the bonuses show it
Since January 19, 2026, the Gambling Commission has capped wagering requirements on bonuses at 10 times and banned offers that mix betting with casino play. UK bettors have also been barred from gambling with credit cards since April 2020. In the US, playthrough terms and payment rules depend on which state you’re in and which book you use.
What sportsbook ownership means for you as a bettor
- Your state regulator matters more than the owner’s passport. Every legal US sportsbook is licensed in the state where you bet. That license, not the parent company’s nationality, decides how your funds are held and how disputes get handled.
- Promotions follow the parent’s strategy. Flutter told investors in August 2026 that it would put more money into FanDuel’s offers, lifting promotional spending to about 6% of handle. When a parent changes course, your bonuses change with it.
- Market depth often reflects where a book grew up. Books with UK roots tend to go deep on soccer, horse racing and international sports, because that’s what their home customers bet on. Comparing the best sports betting sites side by side is the quickest way to see who offers what.
- Ownership changes can move your account. ESPN Bet became theScore Bet, PointsBet became Fanatics and William Hill became Caesars. Each time, customer accounts moved to the new brand, so read the emails about new terms when a deal is announced.
- Prediction markets are the next fight. FanDuel Predicts and DraftKings Predictions both launched in December 2025 using CME Group as the exchange. FanDuel’s sports contracts are limited to states without legal online sports betting.
FAQ: sportsbook owners
Who owns FanDuel?
Flutter Entertainment has owned 100% of FanDuel since July 2025. Flutter also owns Paddy Power, Betfair, Sky Bet and PokerStars.
Is FanDuel a British company?
It was founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2009, but it’s headquartered in New York. Its parent, Flutter, is registered in Ireland and run from New York.
Who owns DraftKings?
DraftKings is a public company listed on Nasdaq. Co-founder and CEO Jason Robins controls about 88% of the voting power through his Class B shares.
Does Jerry Jones own DraftKings?
No. Jones was an early investor during the daily fantasy era, not an owner.
Who is bigger, FanDuel or DraftKings?
FanDuel. It took 39% of US sportsbook gross gaming revenue in the second quarter of 2026, which kept it ahead of DraftKings.
Who owns BetMGM?
MGM Resorts International and Entain, the owner of Ladbrokes and Coral, own it 50/50.
Is bet365 an American company?
No. bet365 is a private British company owned by the Coates family of Stoke-on-Trent.
What happened to ESPN Bet?
Penn Entertainment rebranded it as theScore Bet on December 1, 2025, after its partnership with ESPN ended early.
Who is the CEO of FanDuel?
Christian Genetski, who replaced Amy Howe in May 2026.
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