Customers of the enormous FanDuel sports-betting platform will have the ability this year to wager on the Kentucky Derby directly from their regular accounts for the first time, a feature that officials for the company and Churchill Downs Inc. believe could lead to a significant jump in betting on the race. The feature generating the excitement is the so-called “shared wallet,” which FanDuel debuted late last year. The shared wallet allows FanDuel’s sports betting customers to use their deposits to make bets through the platform’s horse racing account-wagering operation, TVG. While sports bets are made on a fixed-odds system, horse racing bets need to be sent into the vast commingled parimutuel betting system that racing uses. As a result, customers of FanDuel who have never thought about placing a bet on horse racing will be able to bet directly on the race through their existing accounts, without going through the steps that used to be required to open an account with one of the many account-wagering platforms that advertise extensively during the Triple Crown season. Although Churchill Downs officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story, Bill Carstanjen, the company’s chief executive officer, said on a conference call last Thursday to discuss the company’s first-quarter results that he was eager to see the results of this year’s Derby numbers due to the availability of the race on FanDuel. “Look out for the Derby, look out for Derby handle this year,” he told analysts. Andrew Moore, general manager of racing for FanDuel, said that he expects the number of sports-betting customers who will place a bet on the Derby for the first time this year to be “somewhere in the six figures.” FanDuel has about “1 million monthly active” customers in states where sports betting is legal, Moore said, while the company’s entire customer base, including its daily sports fantasy games, runs to 15 million. Last year, total commingled handle on the Kentucky Derby was $168.8 million, by far the highest wagering total on any race held in North America or Europe. Wagering on the race benefits from its singular place on the American sporting landscape, its extremely high television ratings, and its 20-horse field. Each year, account-wagering companies pour their marketing budgets into promotions surrounding the Derby, in an attempt to leverage the publicity surrounding the race into new customers. But those efforts run into what marketing officials call “friction” when casual racing customers see the promotions but don’t recognize the brands. This year, FanDuel fans won’t be presented with that hurdle. “It’s a huge piece of friction removed,” Moore said. “These customers already have accounts, but they will be new to racing.” FanDuel, which operates its own television racing channel focused nearly exclusively on horse racing, launched a marketing campaign Monday to promote Derby betting. The promotions include television spots featuring Rob Gronkowski, the retired NFL star, and Kay Adams, FanDuel’s television host. Gronkowski has been to two Kenucky Derbies, both as a guest of Tom Brady, the larger-than-life recently retired quarterback.  “We’re treating this like any other major sporting event,” Moore said. “Like the Super Bowl.” In his conference call remarks, Carstanjen also referenced the heavy marketing push by FanDuel, saying that the platform “reaches a lot more customers than we’ve ever been able to with our very narrowly focused Twinspires app,” referring to Churchill’s account-wagering company. The marriage between Churchill and FanDuel, consummated in an agreement last year, is a bit of an odd duck, considering that Twinspires and TVG are the two most dominant account-wagering companies in the industry. The two platforms have competed for customers for decades, sometimes by not playing nice. Margins for account-wagering platforms are relatively high compared to bricks-and-mortar tracks or simulcast facilities. Churchill also signed a deal with DraftKings last year, but that agreement essentially gave DraftKings customers the ability to open an account with Twinspires through a branded app. There’s no shared wallet. A bump in Derby wagering due to the participation of sports-betting customers would be a sign that the rapid legalization of the practice across the United States held some promise for racing, a result that has so far proved elusive despite the efforts by many major racing companies to partner with leading sports betting companies over the past several years. :: DRF Kentucky Derby Package: Save on PPs, Clocker Reports, Betting Strategies, and more. During the pandemic, racing enjoyed a surprising and significant resurgence in popularity, but those gains occurred during the first 18 months of the upheaval, when the schedules of sporting leagues were massively disrupted. The gains were nearly wiped out by a sustained five-month contraction in horse racing wagering over the winter of 2022-23. Although the decline is hard to attribute to any single factor, some racing officials have said that the widespread availability of sports betting last winter had offered new competition to racing, citing specifically NFL football. NFL games are by far the most popular betting product in the United States. David O’Rourke, chief executive of the New York Racing Association, told state regulatory officials during a meeting last month that he believed NFL betting was a major factor in double-digit declines in betting on races during the association’s Aqueduct meet. He said that competing against NFL games had been a “headwind” during the winter, but he predicted that betting would rebound in February and March when there was less competition after the Super Bowl. Like Churchill, NYRA has signed agreements with sports-betting platforms in an effort to broaden the reach of its account-wagering operation, NYRABets. “We believe [NYRA’s presence on sports-betting platforms] will be a tail-wind when we’re not competing with football for the wagering dollar,” O’Rourke told the state’s Franchise Oversight Board. The prediction turned out to be correct when the betting declines reversed, although not enough to recover the entire loss. Moore, the FanDuel general manager of racing, said that FanDuel will be analyzing this year’s Kentucky Derby data to inform its future efforts. “It won’t end here,” Moore said. “What we need to do is learn from these customers and adapt to their wants and needs. It’s not just about the Derby. We’re trying to grow the next generation of horse racing bettors.” :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.