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SOURCE-FULL STORY
Sports Betting in the US used to be illegal, for the most part. Now it’s up to individual states to decide if they want it. Besides Nevada, which has always had legal Sports Betting, a handful of states have authorized it, with only New Jersey jumping in completely. But with estimates of US sports gambling hovering around $150 billion annually, it won’t be long before many states decide they want a piece of that action.
So here’s the question for media companies that are hoping to profit in some way from the billions of dollars gamblers are going to bet on sports: How do we get a slice?
I’ve been talking to people who make money in Sports Betting and media, and this looks like the way it’s going to play out:
Sports Betting in the US used to be illegal, for the most part. Now it’s up to individual states to decide if they want it. Besides Nevada, which has always had legal Sports Betting, a handful of states have authorized it, with only New Jersey jumping in completely. But with estimates of US sports gambling hovering around $150 billion annually, it won’t be long before many states decide they want a piece of that action.
So here’s the question for media companies that are hoping to profit in some way from the billions of dollars gamblers are going to bet on sports: How do we get a slice?
I’ve been talking to people who make money in Sports Betting and media, and this looks like the way it’s going to play out:
- The easiest way for media companies to play in this is to simply take ad money from sports bookmakers, and/or develop programming aimed at sports gamblers. We’re already seeing plenty of people getting into this, from ESPN to WarnerMedia’s Bleacher Report, which just announced a deal with Caesars Entertainment to produce a gambling show hosted in Caesars’ Las Vegas casino; in return, Caesars will buy ads on Bleacher Report and on other properties — including TV networks — owned by WarnerMedia. One complicating wrinkle: The overwhelming majority of sports gambling happens via illegal/offshore operations. Do media companies want to take money from those guys, the legal/US guys, or both?
- Trickier: Making more money via affiliate advertising, where the media companies make money by sending viewers and readers directly to casinos and sports books, and getting paid for each referral. Affiliate revenue is increasingly important to all kinds of publishers (including Vox Media, which owns this site), so this isn’t a difficult idea to grasp. But it does link the media companies more directly with betting, which may give some of them pause. Maybe because they’re worried about liability issues that could arise when problem gamblers end up looking for someone to sue once they’ve lost all their money, or perhaps because they simply don’t feel great about embracing gambling, period.
