The long-awaited replacements for the departing Unibet and WynnBET have been announced by regulators from the Arizona Department of Gaming, with Arizona sports betting upstarts Plannatech and Sporttrade entering the Grand Canyon State’s wagering marketplace.
Unibet announced it would shut down the company’s U.S. operations in December, while WynnBET announced the same in August of 2023, leaving the Arizona betting apps scene with 17 operators in the ADG’s most recent report (May 2024).
The two new operators will be partnered with a pair of Arizona tribes, with Plannatech replacing WynnBET as the mobile wagering partner of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, while Sporttrade replaces Unibet as the Quechan Indian Tribe of the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation’s partner.
WynnBET left Arizona officially in February, with the Las Vegas stalwart taking in more than $202 million in total handle prior to closing up shop, ranking seventh among the 20 operators that have taken wagers in the 48th State since the market launched in September of 2021.
The ADG opened up its latest round of sports betting licensure on July 8, running through July 19, with an eye towards finding an adequate replacement for the two tribes, so as to keep the current landscape at 10 licenses held by professional sports teams and eight by tribal nations in the state.
What To Know About New Arizona Sports Betting Operators
Of the two new Arizona sports betting operators, Sporttrade has the largest existing presence in the United States, with the company’s mobile wagering platform live and operational in three states (Colorado, Iowa and New Jersey). The New Jersey-based operator launched in its home state back in 2022, with CEO Alex Kane telling the Philadelphia Business Journal that the operator planned on taking their platform to new markets across America.
"I'm more convinced than ever that the kind of betting that we are defining or discovering, or trying to attach our brand to, is going to be a larger and larger part of the U.S. ecosystem," Kane said in the article.
Plannatech, which launched in the UK nine years ago, provides technology services and risk management for Prime Sports, which will likely be the brand that’s actually going live in Arizona, as has happened in other markets like Ohio and New Jersey where the mobile operator is live currently.
USA Today photo by Owen Ziliak.
What’s Next For Arizona Sports Betting
Given Arizona’s continued strong showing, sports betting-wise, with the seventh largest total handle nationally ($568.4 million), there’s likely to be no slowdown in the state’s betting totals going forward. Of the 33 months’ worth of reporting by the ADG, four of the top 10 handles have come in 2024, including Arizona’s record-breaking high of $759.8 million in March of this year. Bookmark our monthly Arizona revenue report here.
Of those 10 top handles, eight came in either 2023 or 2024, with the outliers being March 2022 (fifth overall, at $690.9 million) and October 2022 ($618.5 million), speaking to the continued growth in the Arizona sports betting market overall.
Going forward, it looks like Arizona bettors will have to familiarize themselves with two more betting brands, with Plannatech and Sporttrade joining Bet365 and Fanatics Gaming as the newest entrants into the state’s marketplace.
Those two recent additions launched in February (Bet365) and April (Fanatics Gaming), with the former already ranking 10th statewide in terms of total handle ($109.4 million), while the latter is 13th, at $32.3 million.
This is a developing story. The article will be updated with comments from Plannatech, Prime Sportsbook and Sporttrade.
