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Why it matters:
This post leverages actual betting behavior to guide marketers where to concentrate marketing efforts to drive acquisition, develop more engaged bettors, and when promotional spending is likely to change behavior. The NFL season creates months of acquisition and engagement opportunities, but the operators that capture the most attention will not necessarily create the most player value.
Key takeaways:
The size of the NFL betting opportunity is not in question. Americans were expected to wager $30 billion on the 2025 NFL season, an increase of 8.5% from the previous season’s revised estimate, as reported by the American Gaming Association. (American Gaming Association)
The harder question for operators is how much of that activity can be transformed into a durable player value. A major sporting calendar can attract players to a sportsbook, but the event itself does not determine which players will return, explore more of the product, or remain active after the initial excitement fades.
For operators preparing for the new season, the opportunity is therefore not simply to capture a surge around kickoff. It is to learn from repeated behavior and make better player-level decisions as the season develops.
The regular season should not be treated as a long introduction to the events that really matter. It is where the most valuable work happens.
Average regular-season viewership reached 18.7 million people per game in 2025, increasing 10% year over year and reaching the NFL’s second-highest average since measurement began in 1988, as reported by the NFL and Nielsen. (NFL.com)
That sustained attention gives operators something the playoffs cannot: repetition. Every week creates another opportunity to learn which teams, markets, bet types, channels, and messages matter to each bettor.
Actual regular-season participation reached 87%, exceeding the 73% who said they intended to participate, as seen in the Optimove NFL Betting Intentions vs. Actual Behavior 2025/26 report. Participation during the preseason and every playoff round, by contrast, fell below stated expectations.
The marketing implication is not to simply spend more during the regular season. It is to use the regular season to create a recognizable player rhythm.
Operators should identify whether a new player returns for a second week, consistently wagers on one team, and if activity expands beyond a first bet or welcome offer. These signals reveal whether acquisition is becoming consistent engagement, or remaining a one-time transaction.
The playoffs require a different objective. By January, operators should earn which regular-season players are becoming less active, which have lapsed completely, and which are likely to respond to a major event. Playoff campaigns can then prioritize targeted reactivation instead of bonusing to reacquire attention from the entire database.
Preseason bettors should also be treated as signals rather than volume. Their early activity may identify highly engaged NFL players, but the relatively small audience does not justify building a mass acquisition plan around it.
What operators should do: Measure the opening weeks as a sequence, not as isolated game days. Optimize acquisition toward the players who return and build the playoffs around reactivation of known regular-season bettors.
Operators do not need to choose between promoting pre-game and live betting. They need to understand the role each behavior plays in the player journey.
Pre-game wagering appeared in the activity of 84% of bettors, while 32% combined pre-game and live bets and only 16% bet exclusively during games, as seen in the Optimove NFL Betting Intentions vs. Actual Behavior 2025/26 report. The opportunity is therefore not to push every player directly into live betting. It is to use the broader pre-game audience to identify who may be ready for a more engaged, in-play experience.
Pre-game betting is the natural acquisition gateway because it demands less from the player. The bettor does not need to be watching live, actively following changing odds, or deciding within seconds. That makes it a logical starting point for onboarding, first-bet journeys, and personalized market discovery.
Once a pre-game wager is placed, however, the operator has a powerful contextual signal. The player has identified a specific game, team, or outcome that matters to them. Instead of sending a generic “bet live now” message to the entire base, the operator can use that demonstrated interest to determine whether an in-play prompt is relevant.
The goal should be progression, not promotion. A first live-betting experience could be supported with a relevant market, content linked to the player’s existing ticket, or a carefully selected incentive. An established live bettor, by contrast, may need no bonus at all.
Operators should also compare live behavior with value and retention. Live activity signals high attention, but it does not automatically signal profitability or long-term value. The strongest segments will emerge when live behavior is combined with deposit patterns, frequency, recency, preferred markets, and responsible-gaming indicators.
What operators should do: Acquire through the widest behavior, then use real-time signals to identify which players are most likely to become hybrid bettors. Do not use the same live-betting promotion for a first-time player and someone already active in-play every week.
A single qualifying amount or bonus structure may look efficient operationally while being irrelevant to large parts of the player base.
Forty-four percent of actual bettors typically wagered $10 or less, while 8% typically wagered at least $500, as seen in the Optimove NFL Betting Intentions vs. Actual Behavior 2025/26 report. Only 18% regularly wagered more than $50, even though 52% of surveyed bettors expected to do so.
This is not a market concentrated around a comfortable middle. It is a broad low-stakes audience alongside a much smaller group placing substantially larger wagers.
An offer requiring a $50 qualifying bet may therefore be built around what players imagine themselves doing, rather than what most actually do. It risks excluding frequent low-stakes bettors before the operator has assessed their engagement, longevity, or overall value.
That does not mean operators should simply lower every threshold. It means promotions must be designed for a specific player behavior and segment.
A low-stakes bettor who returns several times each week may respond to recognition, progress-based challenges, personalized missions, or rewards tied to frequency. A high-stakes bettor may require differentiated service, access, communication, and risk controls. Treating both groups as deviations from an average leads operators to think they should not adopt specific (and more effective) approaches for either of them.
Segmentation should therefore separate stakes from frequency. Two players may generate comparable handle through entirely different patterns: one through many small bets and another through a few large ones. Their preferred messages, incentives, and potential retention risks will not be the same.
Responsible-gaming criteria must remain separate from commercial value. High stakes or frequent activity should never automatically trigger more intensive promotional treatment when player behavior indicates potential harm.
What operators should do: Build multiple value pathways. Segment by stake, frequency, recency, format, deposit behavior, and predicted value rather than using one bet amount as a proxy for the entire player relationship.
Major NFL moments produce large increases in participation, but that does not mean every active player requires an incentive.
Bettor volume rose sharply during major NFL phases while average stake remained within a comparatively narrow range, as seen in the Optimove NFL Betting Intentions vs. Actual Behavior 2025/26 report. Wild Card weekend produced the largest concentration of daily bettors, reaching 156% above a non-NFL baseline, while the average wager varied by only 15 percentage points across the season.
The practical conclusion is that major events motivate more players to appear. They do not necessarily persuade individual bettors to wager much more than usual.
Operators should therefore distinguish between an event creating activity and marketing creating incremental activity. A player who returns every Sunday may not need a bonus to place the next bet. Giving one away can reduce margin without changing the outcome.
The broader advertising market points in the same direction. Sports betting television advertising units declined 9% in 2025 and were nearly 50% below their 2021 level, as seen in the American Gaming Association’s analysis using Nielsen Ad Intel data. (American Gaming Association)
This decline does not mean operators should stop acquiring players. It reinforces the shift from blanket volume toward more efficient acquisition, first-party data, and lifecycle marketing.
Promotional spend should be attached to a defined change: generating a second wager, converting a relevant pre-game bettor into a first-time live bettor, reactivating a valuable lapsed player, or increasing engagement with an underused feature. The operator should be able to state what would probably happen without the offer and what additional behavior the offer is expected to create.
Holdout groups and uplift measurement can then reveal whether a promotion created incremental activity or merely subsidized existing demand. Loyalty can also be expressed through experiences, access, status, and recognition rather than defaulting to a financial reward.
What operators should do: Give every incentive a behavioral objective and measure it against a no-offer group. Reserve promotional value for players whose behavior can realistically be changed.
The most important NFL marketing opportunities do not remain open until the next campaign meeting.
A pre-game wager can signal interest hours before kickoff. An app session during the second quarter can signal readiness for a live interaction. A player’s result, activity, or absence after the game can determine what should happen before the following week.
Operators need to connect these moments rather than manage them through unrelated campaigns.
Positionless Marketing helps sportsbook marketers move directly from insight to execution across these windows. Optimove’s orchestration and AI decisioning capabilities can interpret player signals, prioritize competing campaigns, select the next-best action, and activate personalized engagement across channels.
This speed does not mean increasing message frequency indiscriminately. It means responding with greater relevance and knowing when not to communicate. Responsible-gaming rules, frequency limits, eligibility criteria, and risk indicators should override commercial journeys automatically.
What operators should do: Build one connected decision framework across the game-day lifecycle. Let each new player signal update the next action instead of forcing the player through a journey designed days or weeks earlier.
The new NFL season represents a substantial opportunity, but market size alone will not determine which operators create long-term value.
The strongest strategy is to use the regular season to build weekly engagement, acquire through accessible pre-game experiences, develop relevant pathways into live betting, and recognize that player value does not sit neatly in the middle of the stake distribution.
Operators should also become more disciplined about incentives. Major events already generate activity, and the most loyal players do not always need to be paid to return. Promotional investment is most effective when it changes a clearly defined behavior.
Finally, NFL engagement must be managed as a real-time lifecycle. The operators that can connect what happens before, during, and after each game will be better positioned to turn seasonal attention into deeper, more durable player relationships.
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Writers in the Optimove Team include marketing, R&D, product, data science, customer success, and technology experts who were instrumental in the creation of Positionless Marketing, a movement enabling marketers to do anything, and be everything.
Optimove’s leaders’ diverse expertise and real-world experience provide expert commentary and insight into proven and leading-edge marketing practices and trends.
