The future of SNBets appears increasingly bleak after a recent report claimed Rogers Sportsnet is ready to drop its Canadian sports betting content brand entirely.

According to sports media analyst Jonah Sigel, reporting via YYZ Sports Media, Rogers will adopt a ‘phase-out’ approach, and any work previously branded as SNBets will cease under the name and come to a conclusion ‘within three weeks’.

SNBets first appeared on the scene around a year ago – before the start of the NHL playoffs – making a big social media play to announce its name.

However, less than 12 months later, the brand could cease to exist.

Sigel delved deeper into the story on the latest edition of the Gaming News Canada Show. He said: “Rogers has been under pressure; Rogers specifically has brought in a new Head of Media who has a reputation for hitting numbers by way of cutting heads, so there’s not a lot of surprises.

“[At] first I had heard the entire betting platform was going to be cut and later learnt that wasn’t exactly the case, that it was just the SNBets name itself, [that] the brand was being eliminated.

“In [many senses] it’s people trying to find gold in the hills, and I appreciate that, and they’re trying to get it right.

“Unfortunately, when you’re starting something and pioneering, you fumble and you get things wrong. I think this has been fumbled, I don’t think it was well thought out and executed properly.”

SNBets remains active on social media, posting daily on its Twitter and Instagram handles, but those channels are reportedly set to disappear soon, alongside its website.

“There’s a lot of brand confusion here,” added Sigel. “I don’t think anybody really understood what SNBets was because you’ve got players out there that will take gamblers money, and SNBets wasn’t that.

“You had people out there going: ‘What exactly is SN Bets?’

“They’ve got really good and big advertisers behind them, so you’ve got multiple brands sword fighting for audience recognition, and I think that’s where a lot of the confusion was.

“I think they had a big appetite to do a lot of things; as opposed to trying to get one thing done well, they tried to do lots of things and instead they fumbled a lot.

“I think right now what they’re trying to do is clean it all up and serve their advertisers and partners well and see where they go from there, and hopefully down the road they’ll figure it out.”