Weekly Column: Betting in Broadcasts

In this week’s column, California Sports Lawyer® CEO and Managing Attorney Jeremy M. Evans examines the growing integration of sports betting into broadcasts and explores whether responsibility lies with leagues, media, or players as wagering becomes embedded in the modern fan experience.

Leagues must also draw the line to protect the sport.

You can read the full column below. (Past columns can be found, here).

Sports betting is now available for every phone, television screen, and mentioned is nearly every broadcast. While great for increased engagement among fans and increased tax and fee revenue, sports betting does have a weakness. Addiction and impropriety are those weaknesses.

While the Supreme Court in Murphy v. NCAA and laws through state legislatures opened the door to increased sports betting, the most powerful actors are not the ones who made betting legal, they are the ones who made it unavoidable. That points directly at sports leagues and the media.

Courts and legislatures made sports betting possible, but leagues and media have made it pervasive—often faster than meaningful safeguards could keep up. This is why sports betting has a quintessential threat to its sanctity and purity of the game. Sports betting has become too available and too pervasive.

Sports betting is no longer adjacent, it is now integrated into league and team deals. Watching a game now includes live odds, betting segments, and sponsored commentary. The broadcast experience has evolved into something closer to a betting interface.

What is alarming is that sports leagues have gone from the resistance and opposition to active and participating in production and profits. Leagues control the product and set the tone for normalization. In many ways, financial incentives in deals align with betting growth. Did the leagues move too quickly without building integrity in its infrastructure or is technology now catching up with sports betting violations amongst the athletes? Maybe it is both.

With the integration of betting into broadcasts, availability of odds, betting segments, phone application convenience, and commentary, it is like sticking red meat in front of a hungry lion. Talent and programming are tied to sportsbook partnerships that is blurring the line between journalism, entertainment, and promotion. There is also legal and ethical issues with an increase in sports betting related to disclosure, inducement, and audience protection. In some ways, the media and applications have transformed sports betting from limited access or optional to unavoidable.

The athletes are the most regulated, yet also the most exposed. Athletes have the strictest rules and increasing enforcement, but are directly tied to performance. In other words, there is disproportionate exposure and consequences for athletes compared to their control over the system.

When athletes are the most involved and responsible for results, an integrity gap is created. There must be safeguards like education, monitoring, and policies keeping pace with integration. There must be limitations on implementation of sports betting with leagues until safeguards can keep pace. Leagues must also draw the line to protect the sport. Athletes and media must do their part for integrity as well.

The sustainability of sports betting depends not on legality, but on whether its integration into sports remains credible and responsible. The future debate is not whether betting belongs in sports, but whether it has already gone too far into the broadcast itself. At its core, sports derive meaning from fair competition. Integrity is not incidental to the game, it is inseparable from it. Unless something is done to change the current path, betting scandals at all levels of sport will continue to be a part of the daily news.

About Jeremy M. Evans:

Jeremy M. Evans is the Chief Entrepreneur Officer, Founder & Managing Attorney at California Sports Lawyer®, representing entertainment, media, and sports clients in contractual, intellectual property, and dealmaking matters. An award-winning attorney and industry leader, Evans is based in Los Angeles and Newport Beach, California. He can be reached at Jeremy@CSLlegal.com. www.CSLlegal.com.