Caesars Entertainment is partnering with Turner Broadcasting to build a live TV studio inside the sportsbook at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas that will feature an outpost of the cable giant’s popular Bleacher Report.
The deal, a first between a national television network and a casino operator, designates Caesars as the presenting sponsor of all gambling-related programming on Turner Sports, including segments that could air during the network’s coverage of the NBA, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and Major League Baseball.
“Sports gambling is one of the most unique opportunities that’s happened in quite a long time in this industry,” Turner President David Levy said. “We’re all scratching around, looking for engagement with our fans and our consumers, and we know that gaming and legalized sports gambling is going to increase engagement with sports.”
He added, “It’s going to change the way that televised sports are produced.”
For Caesars, which has moved aggressively to capitalize on sports tie-ups outside of Nevada, it could be a golden opportunity to attract younger customers to its nationwide portfolio of resorts.
The company already has a partnership with the National Football League𑁋another first for a casino operator, although it doesn’t include betting advertising𑁋and team deals with the NHL’s New Jersey Devils and the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers.
But the Bleacher Report will provide a connection to a platform that reaches more than 250 million fans through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, more than one-third of U.S. sports fans aged 18 to 34, according to Turner, which calls it the top digital destination for Millennial and Gen Z sports consumers.
“Broadcasting and media partnerships is one of the big pieces of the sports betting puzzle that hasn’t been addressed yet,” said Union Gaming analyst John DeCree. “It is a great customer acquisition channel for sportsbooks and casinos. This will be the first of several partnerships that we see in this space.”
The partnership follows a similar agreement concluded a couple years back between VSiN, a sports betting-focused broadcast company, and Las Vegas’ South Point Hotel Casino. VSiN also plans to host a live broadcast studio at the Circa Resort & Casino slated to open on Fremont Street in Las Vegas in 2020.
But not every media giant is jumping in. While NBC Sports last month broadcast a Washington Wizards-Milwaukee Bucks game with real-time odds and point spreads on screen𑁋and has registered a slew of betting-related domains𑁋CBS made a point to avoid all gambling talk during its Super Bowl coverage earlier this month.
Then there’s ESPN, which competes with Bleacher Report and has seen its subscriber base decline over the years. Many observers believe the network cannot afford to stay on the sidelines. As one expert, sports law professor John Holden, said, “If ESPN wants to turn their fantasy product into a sports gambling product, that’s the greatest opportunity for profit that exists.”
But Walt Disney Co., which owns ESPN, opposes gambling on moral grounds, and as Chairman and CEO Bob Iger recently made it clear, the company has no plans to change its position.
“I do think that there’s plenty of room, and ESPN has done some of this already, and they may do more, to provide information in coverage of sports, as a for instance, that would be relevant to and of particular interest to gambling and not be shy about it, basically being fairly overt about it.”
Beyond that, he said, “I don’t see The Walt Disney Company, certainly in the near term, getting involved in the business of gambling, in effect, by facilitating gambling in any way.”
