SECAUCUS, N.J. – Last year’s Supreme Court repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act has already had a measurable impact on sports media programming in America. Once effectively ignored by the major broadcasters and media outlets, gambling is now the subject of “Daily Wager,” a daily sports betting show on ESPNews, and accounts for virtually all of the programming on both the Vegas Stats and Information Network and the Action Network.
Fittingly, Action Network CEO Patrick Keane and VSiN CEO Brian Musburger were two of the speakers on a panel at the Betting on Sports America conference Thursday tasked with determining where the sports media landscape currently stands, how sports betting fits into that landscape, and what changes might be seen in the coming years.
Also on the panel were theScore chairman and CEO John Levy and David Preschlack, president of NBC Sports Reginal Networks and NBC Sports’ Group Platform and Content Strategy. Bet.Works founder and CEO David Wang moderated.
For theScore’s part, Levy said, “we figured out what we wanted to do in the (sports betting) space about 25 years ago. We’ve just been waiting for the laws to change.” He said that theScore plans to be engaged as a sports betting operator by the beginning of the 2019 NFL season.
Keane referred to the Action Network as the “Bloomberg of sports betting data,” saying that, while users can’t bet on the platform, they can get information to use elsewhere.
“We want to turn all sports fans into smart, logical, sensible bettors,” he said. “We want to provide the data to help them make those decisions.”
Preschlack said that NBC Sports views itself as a “well-funded startup,” citing the entrepreneurial spirit that permeates the company. He said that NBC’s regional sports networks overlap perfectly with the states that have come online with legal sports betting since the PASPA repeal.
“As soon as PASPA was repealed, we began accepting advertisers. And it’s had an absolutely material impact on our business.”
He said that NBC has used their regional sports networks as petri dishes, pointing to the recent use of NBC Sports Washington Plus to broadcast eight Wizards games accompanied by a “Predict the Game” feature that displayed questions about potential elements of the game onscreen and allowed viewers to vote on those questions online for a chance at a $500 payout.
The network also did a dedicated gambling broadcast of a Philadelphia 76ers game in April on NBC Sports Philadelphia+, which involved gambling-themed commentary and real-time betting data.
The company has also launched the NBC Sports Predictor app, which features two free-to-play games. One of the games, themed around the Premier League, gets approximately 200,000 weekly users; the other one, centered around the PGA Tour, is sponsored.
“We’re trying to be as ambitious and active as possible,” he said.
Levy said that, rather than looking at sports betting as a separate entity, theScore considers betting to be an aspect of sports fandom. The Toronto-based company signed an access deal with Monmouth Park in December 2018 that marked the first agreement in which a North American media company had agreed to be a sports betting partner.
“Rather than thinking about sports betting as this monolithic thing… it’s really only one aspect of why people love sports. We’re doing all the tough stuff now anyway, creating tons of content and tons of data, so we’re going to give them the opportunity to do it under (our) brand.
“That (the Monmouth Park deal) is just the beginning for us,” Levy said. “We think this is going to evolve very quickly.”
Musburger said that VSiN had focused on a subscription model, rather than relying on advertisers. The network has developed a weekly digital magazine that “takes the raw data… and gives people insight into what’s being used to set some of the first lines” across the globe. VSiN also offers its app on a subscription basis on Apple TV, SlingTV, and fuboTV.
“Content is a great way to acquire users,” Keane said. The Action Network’s app allows bettors to track their bets; Keane said that the platform had already been used to track 30 million bets. “Great technology, great content, great user experience. We want to have the best app that you’re going to see in the App Store.”
He said that the network is going through the process to become an affiliate and mentioned that the network had reached an agreement with SiriusXM to do a two-hour daily fantasy and betting show.
That show launches next week on the satellite radio provider.
VSiN’s Musburger, echoing speakers on other panels at the conference, said that it was important to educate the consumer about the specifics of sports betting.
“There are very few people that really understand the industry. There’s a lot of men embarrassed to admit that they can’t read the board when they go into a sportsbook. How do you teach the basics without being condescending?” he said. “We’re trying to demystify that in a way that doesn’t feel threatening.”
Keane agreed, saying that the vernacular “is really confusing. We build a lot of tools and create a lot of videos. We want to make it a lot easier. We want people to have fun.”
“The best handicappers get things right just over 50 percent of the time,” Preschlack said, “and the average bet here in New Jersey is less than 20 dollars. It’s the essence of the casual bettor. Once you get past the educational component, you have to make it entertaining.”
