Game plan: How the NFL has embraced sports betting

The start of May represented something of a signal moment for the NFL and its relationship with betting and gaming when the NFL Draft took place in front of a 100,000-strong crowd outside the Bellagio on the Las Vegas Strip. Despite representing opposite sides in the Supreme Court ever since the justices ruled to overturn PASPA, the relationship between the two parties has been getting closer, with sports betting partnerships much in evidence across the regulated and unregulated states and the NFL itself choosing a raft of official betting partners before the start of this season. As a recent New York Times article put it: “In a matter of a few years, the NFL’s long resistance to doing business in and with Las Vegas crumbled.”

The Allegiant 

Of course, there is a striking symbol of the extent to which football and gaming are closer than they have ever been with the Las Vegas Raiders’ Allegiant stadium on the Strip itself, opposite the Mandalay Bay. Costing $1.9bn, the stadium somewhat stands as a testament to the wishes of the late Sheldon Adelson, the then founder and major shareholder of Las Vegas Sands who long wanted to bring an NFL team to Las Vegas. After much lobbying and a 100-plus page report from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Raiders’ owner Mark Davis was persuaded to enter talks with Adelson and Nevada’s governor, Brian Sandoval, about building a stadium eventually. With the prospect of a huge subsidy to go towards the construction of the Allegiant being dangled in front of Davis, a deal was struck in March 2017 to bring the Raiders to the Strip. It was a symbolic breaking of barriers ahead of the decision in May the next year and one that Sara Slane, formerly head of government affairs at the American Gaming Association (AGA) and now running her own advisory firm, says signaled a way out. “It’s been an incredible evolution to see where the NFL is right now on gaming and sports betting. I remember, not that long ago – definitely less than 10 years ago – the NFL had taken an extremely severe position against any relationship with Las Vegas and with casinos and even, at one point, fined [Dallas Cowboys quarterback] Tony Romo for showing up at a fantasy sports conference in Las Vegas,” she says.

A seismic change

Jeff Berman, an adviser with the consultancy Partis Solutions and CEO of Affiliated Sports Fans, previously worked in the traditional sports space representing professional athletes and at StubHub and Ticketmaster. Berman says the change in the position of the NFL has been “historic” and has utterly altered the landscape of football and betting. “If you had asked even 10 years ago if the leagues would ever be this participatory in sports betting, my answer would have been no. But [NBA] Commissioner [Adam] Silver and others have been in front of so many sea changes in other areas, including sports betting, that the embrace perhaps isn’t so surprising.” It seems pertinent to ask whether the NFL’s opposition to betting was more strategic than moral. Slane still thinks it was the latter, suggesting the league believed that betting was “fraught with all sorts of potential [bad] outcomes.” But she adds the league’s opposition had started to move pre-PASPA’s repeal. “They wanted to get really smart on it,” she remarks. “They were obviously one of the defendants in the Supreme Court case and were not publicly embracing it. But they were doing their homework because they knew they had to be prepared if and when sports betting was legalized.”

A morality play

Here the AGA played a role, having been willing to discuss the gaming industry’s position ahead of the fall of PASPA. “We had been talking to them,” Slane says. “They would never meet with us in their office. But we were definitely talking and educating them about the industry and putting them in touch with the experts.” That education has clearly continued with the official sports partnership deals. The seven operators – the first three signed to tri-exclusive deals and the second tranche being ‘approved’ operators – has allowed them all to pursue the various team sponsorship and market-access deals that have been announced subsequently. During a session at a gaming conference in New York, Jeff Fernandez, VP for business development ventures at the New York Jets, which has an official partnership with WynnBet, said that after an initial hesitancy on the part of the owners, sports betting was now “a big part of our business.” “The fan engagement part has just been so surprising,” he told the audience. “The growth of the social acceptance of sports betting has been so ridiculous. The ability to embrace sports betting and then use it in the right manner – we have learned. The demographics of betting mirrors the demo of the entire NFL.”

A step into the unknown

Such is the evident enthusiasm on the part of many of the teams for sports betting, the question inevitably arises as to whether the sport might consider going one step further than just having a relationship with the operators. Giving some credence to the idea of any sports looking at the potential of going direct-to-consumer are the comments from Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, at the time of his company’s fourth quarter earnings. Noting that once the firm completes its $1.2bn acquisition of OpenBet and matches that up with its existing IMG Arena data supply operation, Emanuel said Endeavor would control the “full menu for sports teams and leagues on a global basis, whether it be player wallets, content, data feeds or live streams.” On the same New York panel as Fernandez, Ron Skotarczak, chief of sales and marketing at Madison Square Garden Entertainment, which owns the NBA’s Knicks as well as the NHL’s Rangers, said the idea of putting together a betting proposition had been discussed at his organization. “We looked at it. We evaluated. There are many teams and team owners that are involved one way or another. I think what it came down to is we do certain things well; we know how to own and operate sports. We don’t know how to run gaming and sports betting companies,” he admitted. The nature of the relationship between the NFL and its teams is a touch more controlling than either basketball or hockey but sources point out that if the organization has any pretension in that area, it certainly wouldn’t be going public about them. In other words, silence should not be taken as just a no. “What happens if the NFL decides to really own this? Again, their embrace from just pre-PASPA is recent from a macro-position, so, who’s to say that they will never say they want to own the whole thing?” asks Berman. Slane points out that the teams and sports betting “couldn’t be more aligned” than having betting outlets in-stadia. But the nature of the relationship could change. “Do I think that all the leagues are going to continue to evaluate their policies and their relationships with sports betting operators? Yes. That could be good, but that could also be bad. “If there is over-saturation, we have heard from some of the leagues that they want to have the ability to control that and have the ability to rein it back in if they can. I think it will be a constant evaluation; is this still working? Is it still serving our needs?”