It’s only the first quarter for the NFL and sports betting

If there was any doubt that the National Football League was in jeopardy of losing its place at the top of the mountain that is professional sports in North American, that’s been tossed to the turf. And it’s been done in the same direct manner as Tom Brady leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to his seventh Super Bowl triumph and spiking any talk about him being washed-up or beholden to Bill Belichick.

The NFL is king as a money-making machine. As the United States scrambles to get out of the farcical, dangerous four-year presidency of Donald Trump and end a pandemic that’s claimed almost 600,000 American lives, Roger Goodell and Co. keep rolling along. Just because it’s Earth Day today, we aren’t referring to climate change when we talk about the “green economy” of America’s Game. That would be the colour of money, as in $105 billion landed in its latest broadcast deal with five different U.S. networks plus Amazon’s prime streaming service. And another $1 billion expected to come from its new partnership agreements announced last week with Caesars, FanDuel and DraftKings that will allow the sports betting companies to use the league’s intellectual property and its trademarks for betting promotion.

And, oh yes, there’s also the $120 million deal announced on April Fool’s (not, it wasn’t) Day with Genius Sports to be the exclusive distributor of data to sportsbooks over the next six years. That agreement includes giving the NFL an ownership stake in Genius Sports, which on Tuesday completed a $1.5 billion merger with SPAC dMY Technology Group that will see the symbol GENI publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange (up 13% yesterday). A nice month’s work.

Before the most recent agreement with Amazon, the NFL had preferred a series of one-year streaming agreements with the likes of Yahoo and Twitter. So it was interesting to see the NFL jump in with both feet and sign multi-year agreements with its betting partners.

“We’re focused on doing sports betting the best over the long term,” Chris Halpin, the NFL’s chief strategy and growth officer, said yesterday during Sportico’s Live Betting on the Rise conference. “We want to engage with fans in the right way, and you have to think of the long-term health of this opportunity.”

Speaking of opportunity, Halpin also shared insight into one of the keys to the NFL capitalizing on sports betting.

“Data, speed, richness, robustness, next generation stats with chips on players,” noted Halpin. Without the depth and quality of data, these agreements may not have been possible - or perhaps not nearly as lucrative.

Keith Wachtel, Chief Business Office of the NHL, echoed a similar thought earlier this week at the StreamTV Sports Summit. Without the introduction of puck and player tracking technology, the NHL would not have been able to maximize the value of its own betting data agreement with PointsBet.

Listening to Halpin and representatives from the NBA, PGA Tour, NASCAR and industry experts speak during the conference, a few things are clear about how professional sports are approaching the legalization of sports wagering in North America:

• Leagues are willing to do deals with multiple sportsbooks
• Betting companies will also become media companies (as we’ve already seen and why the good folks at Score Media and Gaming believe it has a leg up on the competition).
• There exists opportunities to get innovative on the broadcast side, as ESPN experimented last week in running a sports betting show on ESPN 2 alongside a Nets-76ers broadcast on the main network.
• Leagues and networks see an opportunity to grow audiences (and ratings) by integrating sports betting content into game broadcasts - although with a cautionary eye towards not turning off its traditional viewers. Think Jim Nantz and Tony Romo providing play-by-play and color commentary while a BNN Bloomberg-type ticker provides live odds and prop bet information.
• The second-screen viewing experience has yet to be cracked (“How do you link what you see on your phone with what you’re watching on TV,” said NBA head of fantasy and gaming Scott Kaufman-Ross).
• Leagues are looking for partners that can elevate the product and the fan experience, both on the field and off.

“Anybody can take premium sports content and make money on it. What’s key is having partners that will drive fundamental innovation.”