Sports gambling stocks DraftKings and Penn National both rose on Thursday afternoon after Google announced that it would allow real-money gaming apps onto the Google Play store.
DraftKings jumped as much as 6%, and Penn National as much as 4%. In Canada, theScore rose around 7%.
“This is a significant development for all sports bettors on Android and unlocks a huge market for mobile-app only sportsbooks like ours,” said Aubrey Levy, theScore’s vice president of marketing and content.
Starting March 1, Google will allow real-money gambling and daily fantasy apps to be download in 19 countries, including the U.S., Spain and Australia, the company said Thursday in a policy update. Operators are required to have a valid gambling license in their state or country, and must prevent under-age people from using the app.
Despite their exclusion from the official Google store, Android users can still use many of those apps today; it just requires an external download. Subsequent updates also require external downloads, which often come with security warnings. It’s an extra hurdle that has likely turned away some potential users.
The apps were already available on Apple’s App Store.
For this and other reasons, Thursday was a strong day for gaming stocks of all sorts. Four of the five top performing U.S. companies in the SporticoIndex,, a basket of 40 sports-related stocks, were in the gaming sector. They are Caesars, Penn National, dMY Technology and Churchill Downs.
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