Gambling Sponsorships: A Blessing or a Bane for Sports Leagues?

Nations all around the world have all the sudden found themselves shrouded in a new era, in which governments have liberalized their stances toward iGaming and sports betting. Having failed to root it out, advertising is now permitted, usually under very concrete, stringent regulations. Some sports leagues are barely able to keep their heads above water, so they’re gleeful about letting some much needed funding rush in. 

Players and UFC fighters are prancing around with casino and sportsbooks logos on their chests and sleeves. Betting contours’ logos are even lasered into the vision of the broadcast play on the field. You even encounter this on social networks.

Very recently, all of this was strictly illegal, since it’s a known phenomenon that exposure to gambling suggestion creates more of just that. Right now, it seems as if with these partnerships in place between teams and sportsbooks like Odds96, these matches are more often in people’s mouths than before. On the surface, it may seem that it’s only propping leagues up. But many people are troubled and particularly annoyed by this gambling ad omnipresence. The full underbelly forming off of this phenomenon is not fully known, but some people think this is going to backfire and cost leagues in the long run. 

The Upside

The market for entertainment is fiercely competitive. With dozens of sports to watch and all at various levels, why should fans watch one league over another? Even pro leagues have trouble getting noticed, let alone the local leagues. So organizations are eager for any paper headed their way. 

The Money

Individual leagues and teams are able to ink contracts with particular casinos. Right now the NFL has inked deals immediately worth nearly a billion dollars:

• Caesars Entertainment

• DraftKings

• FanDuel.

The same applies to the NBA and MLB. There are already big signs posted up along with data-sharing agreements and whole lounges dedicated to betting. This is new in the USA, but in England, this is old news, and has gone on for a very long time in the Premier League. These create media innovations and grassroot development programs. 

Eyeballs

YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok have people’s attention spread thin. A lot of people normally only tune in to watch the big games. That’s because they think that a lot of regular season games don’t matter until they get to the postseason. When you plug the gamblers into sports though, they’re going to take a newfound interest in sports. And a lot of conscious fans who shied away from the sports betting world before are going to be quite emboldened to do it.

Regardless, the inclusion of gambling drastically increases’ leagues ratings. Whereas non-bettors average watching about 15 games a year, betters watch an average of 50 games, as cited by the NFL. So this is good not only for the leagues but also the TV channels they sign contracts with, who obtain exclusive rights to air their games. Right now, the NFL has contracts with:

• YouTube TV, worth 2 billion;

• NFL network for 1.3 billion;

• Fox, for 2.2 billion;

• CBS – 2.1 billion;

• NBC – 2 billion;

• Amazon: Thursdays 1 billion;

The NBA has contracts lasting through 2035 and 2036 with ABC, NBC, and Amazon Prime Video in addition to TNT sports. MLB has contracts with Fox and Turner Sports. It recently had to replace its former deal with ESPN with Netflix, Apple, and NBC. These two leagues make just a bit less annually than the NFL. Though their revenues have been growing for years, gambling is another force adding to the ratings.

Better State Control

As the FBI has often stated, about 95% of gambling that was done before PASPA was repealed was done illegally, totaling at about a 150 billion dollar a year illegal market. Now, there’s a completely different scene with 39 states now having legalized it with a much better ability to dictate now how bets are placed, under what circumstances, and protect bettors’ rights in the process. On top of that, a lot of money is going to beef up these agencies to root out abusers and run programs for those affected by addiction.

The Catch

Gamblification is predominating in sports – meaning that it is becoming less about viewing and more about risking your money. Really, this is quite a new phenomenon, following many years in which sports betting has either been technologically out of reach for people or they haven’t had it peddled to them to much of a degree.

More and more people are becoming irritated by the aggressive blasting of advertising messages, which now far exceeds what existed before.

Integrity of the Game

One of the best ways to answer whether the sports leagues, sometimes controlled by owners, sometimes by a board, should encourage this gamblification is by looking at their approach while PASPA still was in place. NFL team owners spend tens of millions of dollars per year fighting the legalization of sports betting for states in court for a long time following the national ban’s passing. 

Sports leagues mention that gambling is a threat to games progressing objectively without cheating taking place. In the past, there weren’t any pro teams in Las Vegas for that reason, but now a few diferent teams have started up there, including the NHL, the WNBA’s Aces, and the NFL’s Raiders, moving over from Oakland. 

Now players are just blocks away from casinos taking bets on sports games. Before, not even a super bowl was allowed there. Now 2024’s super bowl was. It’s been broadly known that sports teams have been banned from going anywhere near those places in the past. Also players are expressly prohibited for taking part in any gambling. So outwardly, there is very tight, publicly visible control. Ironically, many NFL owners hold large shares of those same gambling companies and their own ties to gambling have been very entrenched in the past. 

The New York Giants’ first owner Time Mara was a bookmaker who was a key figure in the NFL’s founding. The DeBartolo family that owned the 49ers was caught running a riverboat casino. The list of affiliations by the owners is endless, yet Roger Goodell claims that no game has ever been fixed in the history of the league. This is despite the fac tthat during the playoffs, accusations of game fixings trend on X, which has only ignited since PASPA was repealed. 

Elsewhere in the developing and developed worlds alike, Interpol reports that match-fixing, regardless of the sport, has become a pandemic generating profits of 8 million euros per year in Germany alone. Athletes, in college and in the pros, are actively offered trips and dinners to encourage them to get involved in gamblng too.

Fans are now becoming fatigued with this bombardment and oversaturation of ads, one study concluding fans at matches are now being exposed to 341 minutes of gambling advertising, with separate ads added together.

Youth Vulnerability

There has been a major uptick in young people getting involved, and that also includes highschool kids. A lot of their sports star heroes directly tell people on TV to go gamble in casinos. What these stars say on TV touches people deeply, so they have to really be aware of the message they’re putting across. A lot of people are also alarmed at how badly addiction has ballooned as of late.

UK and Australia have prevented outside of late night hours. Yet there is a lot of concern among fans and government. We will see what action governments will take and how much gamblification may help or hamper sports leagues’ popularity. The more signs and shirts with sportsbooks sported on them, the more people will think of leagues as tacky.