Officials at Louisiana State University (LSU) have terminated its controversial seven-figure partnership with Caesars Sportsbook.
The end of the deal comes after the Louisiana Legislature approved Senate Bill 191. The law, which was sent to Governor John Edwards this week, prohibits any college or university from marketing or advertising partnerships with gambling companies.
The deal that LSU had with Caesars was announced in September 2021. Sports betting launched in the Pelican State in November of the same year. The agreement called for the university to receive at least $1 million in exchange for naming rights for the Caesars Sportsbook at Skyline Club at the team’s football stadium.
Caesars also got signage at Tiger Stadium, the Pete Maravich Assembly Center and Alex Box Stadium as well as an exclusive presence on the LSU Sports Mobile App. The deal also included provided broadcast and digital sponsorship rights.
The deal immediately came under scrutiny but other big-name universities, such as Colorado and Michigan State, signed similar agreements. The controversy only deepened when it was discovered Caesars had sent promotional emails to LSU students, some of them under the legal gambling age of 21.
A story in the New York Times in November 2022 highlighted the deals universities made with Caesars and the potential problems. The story quoted Robert Mann, an LSU journalism professor, who was vehemently against the deal.
“It just feels gross and tacky for a university to be encouraging people to engage in behavior that is addictive and very harmful,” Mann told the Times.
Louisiana State Senator Gary Smith agreed. He wrote SB 191 to prohibit deals like the one between LSU and Caesars. He told the Louisiana Illuminator that the legislation was the right thing to do.
“When we saw that, it really kind of dawned on us that we’re glad the industry is taking their own approach to this, but there’s probably something we should have done in the first place here in Louisiana,” Smith said. “Just to keep that separation between some of our youngest individuals, who are just hitting that legal age, and the industry.”
It was a matter of trying to curb potential problems with young college students and gambling addiction, Smith said.
“We’re generating more than we thought it would generate and that means people are playing more than we thought they might,” he told the Illuminator. “So much deals around college sports and we want to just try and keep that separation especially for our students, we don’t want them tied up in the middle of that with advertisements seeming like they are the sponsor of the school or the preferred site of the school.”
Smith said this law is aimed at college students, not the public at large.
“It’s pretty basic in that it’s not going out there and making some sweeping change, we’re probably going to be playing catch-up with a few of these things as the industry evolves,” he said. “The industry has evolved and grown really quickly, so this is one of those things where we want to get in there and take care of this before it changes anymore.”
