William Hill Launches Sports Betting Mobile App in Illinois

For more than 85 years, William Hill has been one of the most prominent gambling conglomerates in Europe. When the U.S. market finally opened up for legalized sports betting, William Hill was one of the first bookmakers to cross the pond and plant their flag.

Currently, William Hill is offering retail sports betting services at the Grand Victoria Casino in Elgin, Illinois. When the bookmaker opened up its operation in the state, Illinois became the 6th state where William Hill has been successfully competing with other major bookmaking operations from all over the world. The other five states include Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Jersey, and West Virginia.

The opening in Elgin took place on August 1, 2020. After only 8 weeks in operation, the company has been given the green light to offer its sports betting mobile app. William Hill is officially the fifth entry into the Illinois online betting market. Just days prior, PointsBet announced it was launching its mobile app to be run out of the historic Hawthorne Race Course. This puts both bookmakers on course to compete with major U.S. bookmakers like DraftKings and FanDuel.

According to Ken Fuchs, president of Digital for William Hill, in a press release: “We’re excited to bring our top-performing mobile app to my hometown state of Illinois. We look forward to providing millions of sports fans in the state with the best markets and great service.”

William Hill to Offer Special Promo for Mobile Bettors

Since the middle of June, online gambling providers in Illinois have been allowed to register online gamblers remotely based on the language of Governor JB Pritzker’s Executive Order 2020-41. The original executive order, which was slated to expire on August 19, has been extended until the end of September to navigate around issues involving the COVID19 pandemic.

With the window of opportunity closing fast, William Hill wanted to offer motivation for online gamblers to register with them before the September 30th deadline. In that regard, the bookmaker is offering new mobile customers a chance to make their first mobile sports bet a “risk-free” wager of up $300.

While the state’s online bookmakers have been trying to get another extension out of Governor Pritzker, the online sports betting revenue number for July came out at a whopping $47.7 million. The hope is the number excites the Governor enough to grant an indefinite Executive Order 2020-41 extension.