In May, a Supreme Court of the United States ruling found that it was unconstitutional to have a complete and total ban on sports betting. This landmark decision, a game changer on several levels in and in many different ways, means that it will now be left to the states to determine the legality of sporting gaming within their borders.
Now that sports betting seems poised to be legalized, the English Premier League will likely be one of the biggest direct beneficiaries. Each weekend, the Premier League is shown on televisions in 226 countries all over the world. The most recent estimates of their total audience, for all programming, is approximately 1.61 billion viewers.
Viewership is growing in the U.S. but with some uncertainty year-to-year. The ’16-’17 season saw a drop in viewership from a number of possible factors described in a Sports Illustrated column on the media industry last summer. The league is already intertwined with the sports gaming industry, as gambling companies featured on the jerseys of nine Premier League clubs this past season. That’s nearly half, and a truly astounding statistic when you realize that a decade ago there were only four casino companies emblazoned on Premier League shirts and 20 years ago there was not a single one.
Why Sports Betting Will Help Viewership
One of the main factors shown to positively impact sports viewership is involvement with daily fantasy sports. The same can be said for sports betting. Two of the top DFS sites, FanDuel and DraftKings, are already building sports betting platforms to work alongside their current DFS platforms. Media corporation NBC Sports has provided the venture capital financing to FanDuel.
This kind of partnership will benefit both sides as FanDuel works to promote their sports betting platform and NBC Sports looks to increase Premier League viewership.
Rising Interest in Daily Fantasy Soccer
The overall interest in daily fantasy soccer could also help drive up Premier League viewership. Daily fantasy soccer is being promoted heavily right now by FanDuel and DraftKings during the World Cup, as it’s one of the few sporting events taking place right now. The NFL, NHL, and NBA are all in offseason right now, and will be for a substantial period of time, hence daily fantasy soccer has a lot less to current compete with.
With more contests showing up for daily fantasy soccer, FanDuel and DraftKings have seen an influx of new players who are learning how to apply basic DFS strategy to fantasy soccer.
The growing demand for assistive tools in daily fantasy soccer has also opened the door for the top lineup optimizers to incorporate soccer into their platforms.
As the major fantasy sites begin to accept the potential of daily fantasy soccer, the match viewership will begin to rise (along with the viewership boost from the legalization of sports betting, as stated above).
Sports gambling is about as mainstream as mainstream can be these days. It was trending that way for awhile, and then the daily fantasy sports explosion cemented a place for sports betting within the pulse of American culture.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, is currently a regular contributor to SB Nation, WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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