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Every sportsbook in the US is after the same high-value customer. Fanatics Betting & Gaming decided that competing for that customer the same way everyone else does was a losing game, and built a different one instead. Jamie Coombes, VP of Performance, and Andy Magnus, Director of Paid Marketing at Fanatics Betting & Gaming, laid out exactly how, and it holds up as a playbook for any B2B marketer trying to do more with a smaller, smarter audience.

1. Vertical integration is the advantage, but data alone does not activate it. Fanatics has over a decade of commerce data on millions of fans, spanning what they buy, who they root for, and how they engage. On its own, that data is a warehouse.  Cognitiv turns that signal into a decision Fanatics can act on. "We feed that signal to Cognitiv," Jamie explained, describing how the team models which customers are actually worth acquiring rather than optimizing for whoever is cheapest to reach that week.
2. Obvious personalization is often the wrong personalization. Andy was blunt about the limits of matching a bettor to their favorite team. "I'm a New York Jets fan, and I would never bet on the Jets, cause I don't hate myself." A favorite team does not reliably predict betting behavior. Fans root for a team and bet against it for a dozen different reasons, from superstition to plain self-preservation, and treating fandom as a stand-in for intent misses all of them.  The real work is figuring out which signals belong in targeting, which belong in personalization, and which are just noise, a distinction most teams skip past.
3. Retention starts before day one ends. Jamie pointed to the first 14 days as the single highest-leverage window in the customer lifecycle. "Early life is the most important part, because that is when a consumer will decide whether they are going to go or stay with us." Everything in that window is designed to teach a new customer what the rest of the ecosystem, from ticketing to collectibles, actually offers them.
4. Celebrity marketing is a top-of-funnel tool, not a strategy. Rather than compete on signup bonuses or A-list endorsements, Fanatics uses a small set of brand-aligned faces to build awareness, then lets the product convert further down the funnel.

None of this is theoretical. Cognitiv's full-funnel CTV work has already driven a 19% lift in customer lifetime value for Fanatics Sportsbook and an 18% lift in brand awareness around moments like March Madness. Proof that the same audience intelligence behind this strategy performs at both ends of the funnel.

In an industry built on odds, Fanatics is putting its money on knowing the customer better than anyone else can.

Read the full press release on Cognitiv's full-funnel CTV results with Fanatics here.