Sportsbooks Move Group-Chat Betting In-App as FanDuel and DraftKings Add Social Tools

Sportsbooks are pulling the group chat into their own apps, according to an analysis from Gambling Insider. The trade outlet describes a shift in which the conversation about a bet, the discovery of it and the wager itself increasingly happen in a single product.

What happened

Bettors have long traded picks with friends on platforms such as Discord, X and Reddit. Gambling Insider notes that the chat and the wager usually sit in different places. When a friend shares a parlay, the person receiving it has to go into a sportsbook, locate the matching markets and put the slip together again manually.

Operators are now trying to close that gap. FanDuel's Community Feed shows the wagers other customers have placed and lets users add one to their slip with a single tap. At DraftKings, Social Betting Groups allow users to set up or enter a group, track friends' bets, talk in real time and rank themselves on a leaderboard.

Other examples go further. FanDuel ran a Thanksgiving promotion last year called Pass the Leg, in which each participant contributed one leg to a shared multi-leg parlay and then decided individually whether to place it. The operator said the idea came from watching fans collaborate in group chats. FanDuel has also partnered with the social sports app Real, taking the opposite route by placing its odds inside an app where fans already talk about games. Peer-to-peer platform Slips has added a feature that lets friends create, discuss and settle their own bets in an in-app chat.

Adam Bjorn, CEO of Plannatech, said social betting itself is nothing new outside the US, where forums, tipster groups and WhatsApp have long played that role. He said US operators are now giving those conversations a home inside their own ecosystems, and called social "fundamentally an engagement and retention play."

Odditt's Matt Bresler, who co-founded the company and serves as its CEO, said feeds turn the job from search into discovery. In his words, once a bet can be tapped and dropped into a cart, "the sportsbook is just the checkout."

Why it matters

The same features that cut effort also remove pauses. Elizabeth Schwab, a business psychology professor at The Chicago School, said social influence could be stronger inside an app because there are fewer barriers to acting. She compared it to a saved credit card making a purchase easier. She added that friction can encourage slower, more logical decisions, though it won't stop someone already committed to betting.

Research cited in the piece points to a social effect on betting volume, though the study did not examine social cues built into a sportsbook app. In a study, 33 regular bettors aged 19 to 29 were interviewed about smartphone betting, and nearly all said they bet more when friends were involved. One described staking $5 or $10 alone but $20 or $30 with friends.

On responsible gambling, the views quoted are split. Bjorn said groups can act as "natural safety nets," because friends notice chasing of losses, but cautioned that social tools should not nudge people into copying wagers beyond their means. Bresler argued that the issue is framing rather than friction. In his view, the real risk is a stream of bets that offers no context and no route out, and what users are told before a bet and where they are directed when they need help matter most.

What's next

Gambling Insider's analysis suggests the sportsbook is turning into the venue in which bettors watch others' activity and then choose whether to follow it. Whether in-app social tools come with the safeguards Bresler describes is the open question. That includes clear context about each bet and visible routes to help.