Sports Betting Alliance Fields Fifth Member, bet365 Joins Advocacy
Posted on: June 11, 2025, 10:24h.
Last updated on: June 23, 2025, 08:06h.
- Bet365 has joined the Sports Betting Alliance
- The SBA supports legal sports betting in all 50 states
- The SBA also opposes unregulated online gaming
The Sports Betting Alliance is growing. The nonprofit trade group that advocates for legal, regulated sports gambling and iGaming announced on Tuesday that bet365 is its newest member.
In 2021, three years after the United States Supreme Court gave states the right to dictate their laws regarding gambling on professional and college sports, the Sports Betting Alliance (SBA) was founded through a partnership between FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, and Fanatics. Bet365, the British gambling giant that’s been slow to take in the US market, though it continues to make market share gains, has joined SBA’s mission of lobbying state lawmakers to get on board with sports betting and iGaming.
Bet365 shares the SBA’s commitment to a regulated, transparent, and sustainable US online gaming market. Together, we’ll continue fighting for more states to swap their dangerous and unregulated sports betting and iGaming products for regulated, consumer-protected legal platforms,” said SBA President Jeremy Kudon.
The SBA’s mission statement says the organization “believes customers in all 50 states should enjoy the benefits of transparent and legal sports betting and online casino gaming with consumer protections and responsibly gaming tools that do not exist on the unregulated market.”
Online Gaming Nonprofit
The Sports Betting Alliance is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization. The IRS says such entities are “an association of persons having some common business interest” with the “purpose of which is to promote such common interest and not to engage in a regular business of a kind ordinarily carried on for profit.”
The SBA and its members are urging state regulators and attorneys general to crack down on unregulated casino websites, many of which operate from offshore countries and territories. A more recent trend, however, involves supposedly free-to-play social casino platforms conducting sweepstakes games that critics allege violate state gambling laws and iGaming prohibitions.
Trip Stoddard, bet365’s vice president of sports betting, said the company is excited to join the SBA to “stomp out illegal and unregulated betting and bring regulated sports betting to all 50 states.”
Bet365 is privately owned by the Coates family. Patriarch Peter Coates enjoyed a successful career in the British gaming market by operating high-street betting shops.
In 2000, along with his daughter, Denise, the Coates’ expanded their gaming business to the internet with bet365, an online sportsbook and gaming operation. Bet365 became a massive success, prompting the family to sell its betting shops to Coral in 2005 for £40 million to focus on the online market.
Regulatory Hiccups
Bet365 operates online sports betting in 13 states. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the firm additionally operates iGaming with internet slots and interactive table games.
Last year, bet365 faced hefty repercussions in New Jersey for regulatory mishaps. In August 2024, bet365 was ordered to pay more than $500K back to bettors after state regulatory officials determined that the online sportsbook altered odds in the house’s favor after accepting bets on 13 events.
Bet365 officials claimed an obvious error in the initial offerings. The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) ruled that the company’s inability “to ensure the accuracy of its data feeds” warranted all 199 bets being made whole.
These types of multiple and serious violations cannot be tolerated in the New Jersey gaming regulatory system,” said DGE Deputy Director Louis Rogacki.
Just weeks later, bet365 was again fined in New Jersey for accidentally accepting bets on completed events. The issue was resolved with bet365 paying a $33K settlement.
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