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Portfolio Manager Insights
A growth play on online sports gambling stocks
After facing years of regulation and other hurdles, online sports betting has entered a new phase of rapid growth and market penetration, says Fidelity’s Peter Belisle.
- Fidelity Portfolio Manager Peter Belisle has raised the stakes in his view of the online sports-betting market, which he says has benefited from broader legalization across the U.S., rising user engagement and improving profit margins.
- “I believe online sports betting is still in its early innings as an industry, with many operators poised for meaningful structural growth seven years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on state-authorized sports betting,” explains Belisle, who manages Fidelity® Select Leisure Portfolio.
- In helming the industry-based, equity-focused strategy, Belisle seeks companies with competitive moats or secular tailwinds, as well as strong cash generation and investment opportunities with the potential for elevated returns.
- His preference for businesses in subindustries benefiting from strong demand and constrained supply has drawn him to online sports betting, where he has chosen structurally advantaged firms he believes are well-positioned to capitalize on favorable trends.
- Although 39 states, along with Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, have authorized some form of sports betting, substantial growth opportunities still remain in California and Texas, two populous states where online sports and entertainment gambling has yet to be legalized, he says.
- “Americans love sports and gambling, and I think the U.S. market can continue to grow the per capita consumption of sports gambling for many years,” Belisle contends.
- He also sees room for growth among existing states that have authorized sports betting, believing the number of U.S. adults who have participated in online sports betting still has room to grow. “Roughly half the U.S. adult population is now able to participate, but only a small fraction of that is engaged as of the end of 2025,” he notes.
- Belisle adds that the industry has been coalescing toward a duopoly market structure around market-share leaders Flutter Entertainment (parent of FanDuel) and DraftKings Holdings.
- “Existing players that haven’t established a dominant position (e.g., Penn Entertainment) are under tremendous pressure to deliver profits, while others have already exited the field (i.e., Wynn Resorts),” says Belisle. “The upshot of this is a likely decrease in marketing/promotional spend and improved profitability among established players in this space going forward.”
- Belisle’s constructive view of the industry is reflected in the fund’s sizable exposure to DraftKings and Flutter as of December 31, 2025. Both stocks came under pressure in 2025 following the rollout of prediction-markets businesses, an unregulated form of betting that offered new entrants a backdoor into sports gambling. Although many investors believed this model posed a competitive threat to the market share of DraftKings and Flutter, Belisle holds a different view.
- “I think this perspective is overly simplistic and doesn’t appreciate the difference in product complexity between prediction markets and online sportsbooks,” he says. “In 2026 and beyond, I think it will become increasingly clear that prediction markets are not displacing sportsbooks – and there may be some eventual legal challenges anyway – all of which sets up well for reversing this negative narrative.”
- “Right now, online sports gambling is a ‘winners-take-most’ market dominated by a small number of players,” Belisle concludes. “And we are nowhere near mature, long-term duopoly economics, meaning the stocks appear meaningfully cheaper on a true long-term economic basis.”
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