National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman said Wednesday he has no concerns about the integrity of his league’s players or referees, and the expansion of legal sports betting doesn’t change that.
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Bettman spoke to journalists after he and three operators – Joe Asher, CEO of William Hill U.S.; Greg Carlin, CEO of Rush Street Gaming; and Matthew King, CEO of FanDuel – spoke at a G2E session about betting partnerships with the leagues and sportsbooks and took journalists’ questions afterward. CNBC correspondent Contessa Brewer, who focuses on gaming issues, moderated the panel discussion.
The NHL has partnership deals with three sports-betting operators: MGM Resorts, William Hill, and FanDuel. Rush Street is a regional casino operator, with facilities in Illinois and Pennsylvania. Carlin said the company expects to complete partnership negotiations with three professional leagues soon.
Bettman said he doubted that many hockey pros pay attention to sports-betting lines. Before the U.S. Supreme Court ruling opening the door to sports betting outside Nevada, NHL games drew far less action that basketball and football. But in the first year of the NHL’s Las Vegas Golden Knights, sports betting on hockey increased by 60 percent and then went up another 40 percent last year, according to statistics Bettman cited from William Hill.
“Having said that, I don’t think that’s anything our players focus on,” Bettman added.
Bettman said the NHL has never asked for an “integrity fee” from sportsbook operators but will ask operators to pay for the player and puck tracking data that is expected to be available from all 31 teams by the start of the playoffs in April. The arena being built in Seattle for the league’s 32nd team will have it when play begins next season.
Player tracking involves individual stats such as skating speed and distance, while puck tracking pinpoints its location 2,000 times a second.
King said the benefit teams and media companies get from sports-betting partnerships, while meaningful, is not enough to “move the needle.” Rather, they need to focus on keeping people engaged in the sport.
Asher said partnerships between teams and sportsbooks help both sides because of the overlap between fans of each activity: not everyone who watches a game bets on it, but almost every bettor does watch.
“The more we can cooperate, help them work on things that are crucial to both of us – like integrity of the game – the (more the) relationship will evolve,” Asher said.
King said the NHL’s tracking data project will be attractive to millennials because it provides new information to people watching the game, either in person, on TV, or by streaming.
Bettman called that age group the NHL’s “sweet spot.”
“We skew younger, more affluent, more educated, more tech savvy than the other major sports,” he said. “All of this fits nicely into this package.”
He noted that the Golden Knights are the first team from the top level of a major professional sport in Las Vegas. Fans attending home games at T-Mobile Arena are able to place bets on their mobile devices.
“I think the experience in T-Mobile has been a consciousness-raising lesson for all teams,” he said. “Everybody is focused even more, in a very competitive marketplace, on the importance of game presentation.”
