JB Smoove pitching Caesars sportsbook has been omnipresent on the television airwaves. JB is not alone. Ads touting sportsbooks and online gaming are present during football and basketball telecasts, but also on shows with no ties to sports.
The question: When is enough enough?
At a sports betting conference in the Meadowlands, industry folks worry that the growing frequency of such ads will result in a backlash and the kind of government restrictions on ads similar to Europe.
Bill Miller, president of the American Gaming Association, agreed with that assessment. He told the SBC Summit North America the level of sports betting ads “is like an unsustainable arms race.”
In the U.K., teams are subject to a “whistle-to-whistle” ban on sports betting ads appearing during the broadcast of their games. Italy has banned all gambling ads.
Jeff Fernandez, vice president of business development and ventures for the New York Jets, said the industry and its professional sports partners need “to make sure we don’t have to go to a whistle-to-whistle ban like what happens in the U.K.”
Joe Asher, president of sports betting for the gambling technology company IGT, also warned of “a backlash.”
“It’s not something that lends itself to self-regulation,” said Asher, also the former CEO of gambling company William Hill. “I do worry about when we get to that phase.”
The Jets promote their sports betting partners during games, including logos on the building, scoreboard mentions and ads for an in-stadium sports betting lounge.
At the conference, Ken Fuchs, senior vice president of sports for Caesars Digital, also called for caution.
“You do have to draw lessons from the U.K.: you have to self-regulate,” he said.
Johnny Avello, director of race and sportsbook operations for DraftKings, said his company’s current level of advertising is working as planned.
“I was at the (train) terminal in Hoboken yesterday and I saw DraftKings on every kiosk and every wall,” he said. “And I think it’s effective. It works.”
PointsBet said advertising is needed to attract new customers and hold onto existing ones.
“We have taken a focused view by listening to what our bettors want and reaching them where they are,” said Kyle Christensen, the company’s chief marketing officer. “We have a philosophy not to spend irrationally but be aggressive and disciplined. It has served us well, made our users happy, and will continue to be our perspective as we look at future advertising budgets.”
PointsBet debuted two new ads featuring recently retired New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees telling people how to live their “bet life.”
In other Summit news, Bally’s Chairman of the Board of Directors Soo Kim anticipates the sports betting landscape to look dramatically different in a few years.
During the Keynote Fireside Chat at the Meadowlands Expo Center, Kim said that sports betting’s future will not just be Super Bowl wagers and football prop bets, according to CDC Gaming Reports.
”Sports betting is going to be ubiquitous and it’s going to be always on, all the time.”
That will be possible, in Kim’s vision, thanks to a new paradigm that doesn’t rely on point spreads, parlays, or money lines. Instead, he thinks that sports betting will be less about skill and handicapping and more about chance.
Kim noted that only 11 percent of Americans who get ESPN watch the sports channel. And only a fraction of that 11 percent are people confident about “handicapping and gaming in sports.”
“Sports lotto, or sports slots, how large do you think that market can be?” Kim said. “I think that market will be way many times larger than any of these other estimates.”
Kim also believes e-sports is a fertile market waiting to be cultivated. While regulatory issues, including e-sports as a subset of mobile gaming, along with data and rights issues, need to be addressed, there are also great opportunities.
“I think the important lesson to learn is the amazing number of audiences watching and interacting with e-sports,” Kim said.
The most important thing is being able to interact with customers on their phones, he said. “Whether you place wagers on lives sports events or with a virtual blackjack dealer or a video poker team, it’s all the same. It’s all mobile gaming.”
“The lines are in the blur between what is a sports bet and what is a roulette machine,” Kim said. “If you think about what sports is, it’s just a random number generator and content. You can create anything you want to and deliver whatever your customers want. I don’t think people are thinking about this the correct way.”
