A new survey conducted by Seton Hall University confirms the benefits of sports betting to the business of professional sports, and validates the recent incidence of leagues partnering with gaming operators.
The latest Seton Hall University Sports Poll, shared exclusively with Yahoo Finance, finds that 70 percent of Americans surveyed say they are more likely to watch a sports event if they have placed a bet on it.
On the flip side, 61 percent of respondents said betting on sport could lead to match fixing or cheating.
Seton Hall conducted the poll this week by calling 741 U.S. adults, and the results have a 3.7 percent margin of error.
The poll shows Americans basically split on whether they believe legal sports betting should be permitted on college sports: 35 percent of people say only pro sports, 42 percent say pro and college. (The rest said “neither” or had no opinion.)
Among other highlights, only 40 percent of people say they “approve” of the U.S. Supreme Court decision to strike down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection ACT and allow states to legalize sports betting, and only 32 percent of people say they would be more likely to bet on games if their state legalized. Taken together with the 70 percent who say they’re more likely to watch a game when they bet, it suggests that most people are either already betting or not, regardless of legality in their state, and are not concerned about patronizing a legal, regulated book.
Meanwhile, a separate poll conducted by ESPN on Twitter showed that 68 percent of 3,600 respondents believe that a game in one of the major U.S. sports leagues has been “compromised for gambling purposes” in the past 10 years.
However, a panel of experts on sports integrity at last week’s ICE Sports Betting USA conference concluded that there is no integrity problem associated with gambling and professional sports.
“Governing bodies, particularly in Europe, have realized that they need to be more transparent in communicating issues that arise,” Perform Group’s Jake Marsh said.
The panel, which Purdum moderated, included Marsh alongside representatives from the NBA the PGA, SportRadar, and ESSA.
SportRadar’s Andy Cunningham said that it’s been “very refreshing to see some sports organizations who didn’t have those (integrity pillars) in place since the Supreme Court decision that legalized sports betting are now implementing integrity programs.”
If suspicious activity is detected, Cunningham added, Sportradar has a team of experts from the industry who drill into the data and report anything that looks suspicious.
“These guys know what suspicious betting looks like,” he said.
