Sherwood News

Americans bet more than $140 billion on sports last year

More than $15 billion was wagered in November alone, per Legal Sports Report.

1/27/25 11:29AM

America loves its sports, and risk-taking also isn’t exactly shunned in the land of the free.

Since the US Supreme Court legalized states to allow sports betting in 2018, it’s no surprise that millions of Americans have gone on to bet on their favorite team. What is surprising, however, is just how big the industry has become already.

Indeed, legal betting is now ingrained in US sports culture, with leagues and players, franchises and networks, all keen to partner with leading sportsbooks. Americans wagered more than $140 billion in 2024, per data collected by Legal Sports Report.

This includes handles from events like the Super Bowl, which was predicted to draw in $23.1 billion in a single evening, with more than a quarter of all Americans to place some form of bet on the results, according to the American Gaming Association.

At the center of the boom is the mobile-friendly betting experience offered by industry giants like DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment, the latter of which now has a $47 billion market cap, making it more valuable than physical casino giant Las Vegas Sands. A sign of the times... even if they were on the wrong side of results in December.

Toby Bochan

Market Wrap

10h

Stocks rise amid optimism around US peace plan for Iran

Gains in technology supported the broader market rally.

Max Knoblauch13h

JetBlue surges following report it is exploring potential merger partners

Shares of JetBlue spiked more than 15% midday Wednesday following a Semafor report that the airline is exploring merger partners.

The company has explored Washington’s regulatory temperature around a potential merger with United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and Alaska Air, per the report. When Semafor reached out to JetBlue regarding the exploration, it declined to comment.

JetBlue’s attempt to acquire budget rival Spirit was blocked by the Biden administration in 2024.

Exclusive: JetBlue explores potential merger partners

JetBlue’s attempt to acquire budget rival Spirit was blocked by the Biden administration in 2024.

Matt Phillips14h

Sandisk, Micron dive as Google Research unveils AI algorithm to reduce memory demands

This might be an unfortunately memorable day for the memory trade.

Memory stocks Sandisk, Micron, Seagate Technology Holdings, and Western Digital sank Wednesday after Alphabet’s Google Research group published details of a new algorithm known as TurboQuant.

Per Google’s extremely technical release, TurboQuant is an algorithm that allows for a data technique called “vector quantization” to be used while addressing the issue of so-called “memory overhead,” allowing data in AI models to be compressed without reductions in accuracy or requiring retraining, while reducing the memory storage requirements at data centers.

And that outlook seems to be enough for the market to be sending memory stocks down for the day.

TurboQuant: Redefining AI efficiency with extreme compression

And that outlook seems to be enough for the market to be sending memory stocks down for the day.

J. Edward Moreno15h

Fundrise’s venture fund extends rally, trading more than 2 dozen times above asset value

Fundrise Innovation Fund, a publicly traded venture fund that owns stakes in private companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX, is continuing to rally as the gap between the value of its stock price and its underlying assets grows.

Shares of the fund, which uses the ticker VCX, closed at $314.99 on Tuesday and rose to $533 by Wednesday morning — a nearly 70% jump for the day and a more than 1,500% increase in the value of its stock since it went public on March 19.

Fundrise’s vertiginous price action underscores just how hungry retail investors are for exposure to high-flying private companies, even at increasingly eye-watering implied valuations.

Fundrise’s venture fund, which owns private tech giants like Anthropic and SpaceX, surges as retail investors pile in

Fundrise’s vertiginous price action underscores just how hungry retail investors are for exposure to high-flying private companies, even at increasingly eye-watering implied valuations.

15h

LET THERE BE LIGHT

Matt Phillips