BetMGM’s CMO Is Out After Just Over a Year — What the Leadership Churn Says About Where the Operator Is Headed

Casey Hurbis is out as BetMGM’s chief marketing officer, the company confirmed this week. He joined the operator in December 2024, making his tenure just under five months shy of 18 months. The timing is hard to ignore: Hurbis is departing as BetMGM grapples with a cut to its 2026 revenue guidance, rising customer acquisition costs attributed to prediction market competition, and a strategic pivot that is forcing hard choices about where to spend marketing dollars. His exit is the latest in a series of leadership moves at the operator, and together they sketch a picture of a company still searching for its footing at a moment when the competitive landscape is shifting faster than anyone anticipated.

What Hurbis Was Hired to Do

When BetMGM announced Hurbis’s hire in December 2024, the framing was unambiguous: this was the brand’s first dedicated CMO since 2020, a signal that the company was finally ready to invest seriously in marketing leadership after years of filling the gap with other arrangements. Hurbis came with a reputation built outside gambling — 24 years in automotive marketing and a high-profile stint as CMO at Rocket Mortgage, where his team won consecutive No. 1 rankings on USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter. The bet was that consumer marketing depth, rather than gambling industry pedigree, was what BetMGM needed to build the kind of brand loyalty that moves customers away from DraftKings and FanDuel.

That hypothesis never had the chance to be fully tested. Less than 18 months later, Hurbis described his time at BetMGM as a “high-velocity chapter” on his way out the door — language that reads less like a planned handoff and more like a polished exit statement from someone who moved on faster than expected.

The Financial Context Behind the Timing

The departure lands weeks after BetMGM delivered a first quarter that it could not fully defend. The company posted $696 million in Q1 2026 net revenue, a 6% year-over-year gain that nonetheless came in well below analyst consensus estimates of roughly $767 million. Online sports betting net revenue of $203 million grew just 4% year-over-year, and monthly active users fell 9% as the company continued shedding lower-value customers. The miss prompted BetMGM to cut its full-year 2026 revenue guidance from $3.1–$3.2 billion to $2.9–$3.1 billion, while holding adjusted EBITDA guidance of $300–$350 million but guiding toward the lower end of that range.

CEO Adam Greenblatt was direct about one of the central causes: prediction markets. On the Q1 earnings call, he described companies like Kalshi as running a deliberate campaign to poach licensed sportsbook customers — buying sports betting keywords, blanketing sports media properties, and in some cases building “sportsbook mode” product features to mirror the regulated sports betting experience. The practical effect on BetMGM was a material increase in customer acquisition costs that Greenblatt said compressed margins and contributed to the guidance cut. Citizens JMP Securities estimated that Kalshi generated approximately $304.9 million from sports event contracts in Q1 2026 alone, which — using a comparable measure — puts it ahead of BetMGM’s $203 million in online sports betting revenue for the same period.

For anyone running marketing at BetMGM, that is a brutal operating environment. The channels Hurbis would have been responsible for were precisely the ones where costs were surging due to competition he had no power to neutralize. You can learn more about how BetMGM stacks up in the current market in our BetMGM sportsbook review.

A Pattern of Short Tenures at the Top

Hurbis was not BetMGM’s first rapid executive exit. The company cut 83 employees at its New Jersey headquarters in early 2025 as part of a broader cost restructuring. Entain, the UK parent company that holds a 50% stake in BetMGM alongside MGM Resorts, also experienced its own leadership disruption — CEO Gavin Isaacs departed in February 2025, creating enough of a vacuum that Bloomberg Intelligence analysts suggested it could prompt MGM Resorts to consider acquiring Entain’s share of the joint venture outright. That acquisition has not materialized, but the instability at the parent-company level filters down. When the ownership structure is in flux, strategic alignment at the operating level becomes harder to maintain, and marketing leadership is often the first function to feel it.

The churn matters because marketing at a major US sportsbook is not a function where institutional knowledge can be rebuilt quickly. Brand positioning, media buying relationships, sponsorship strategy, and customer acquisition frameworks are all built over time. Losing a CMO after less than 18 months — and before his second NFL season — means BetMGM enters what could be its most challenging competitive period without continuity at the top of its marketing organization. Those looking at BetMGM’s current promotions can check the latest BetMGM promo code while leadership transitions play out.

Where BetMGM Goes From Here

The strategic picture Greenblatt has described publicly suggests BetMGM is consciously pulling back from acquisition-heavy sports betting marketing and doubling down on iGaming and omnichannel markets — particularly Nevada, where it operates both digitally and through MGM’s retail properties. The company said it will reduce marketing in online sports betting-only states and redirect spend toward higher-return areas, which is a rational response to a margin problem but represents a meaningful change in ambition from the brand that spent years trying to close the gap with DraftKings and FanDuel on sports.

BetMGM has also ruled out launching its own prediction market product, citing the risk that doing so could jeopardize its casino licenses in Nevada and other states. DraftKings, FanDuel, and Fanatics have all entered prediction markets, accepting the regulatory risk BetMGM will not. That strategic constraint is real, but it leaves the operator competing in a sports betting market where its three biggest rivals have a product and revenue stream that it does not.

For bettors, the near-term question is less about who fills Hurbis’s seat and more about what BetMGM’s marketing philosophy looks like in a leaner posture. The operator is still one of the largest in the US and continues to show iGaming strength — iGaming net revenue rose 9% year-over-year to $481 million in Q1. Those evaluating BetMGM as a casino option can find the latest details in our BetMGM casino review. But the sports betting ambition that defined BetMGM’s marketing posture for years is quietly being scaled back, and the revolving door in the CMO office is one of the more visible symptoms of a company recalibrating what it wants to be.