Legalized gambling is always better for players and bettors. For example, if you play a game like Key Bet Roulette at a legal online casino, you can be sure to get a fair and safe experience. This is much better than trying your luck in a “shady” place.
You can find an up-to-date list of sites that will offer a fair and secure experience on Roulette77 USA, but here we will focus on NFL betting. After the US Supreme Court's “Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA)” ruling in 2018, sports betting has become legal in many states, and the NFL is benefiting from this: in a short period of time, we can say that the league's attitude towards gambling has completely changed. In other words, legal gambling seems to provide many advantages not only for players but also for sports leagues. Below, we will evaluate what these advantages are from the NFL perspective and talk about how legal sports betting has changed this league.
In 2022, the NFL shared its list of new sports betting partners: DraftKings Inc, FanDuel, Caesars Entertainment, BetMGM, WynnBET, FOX Bet Super 6, and PointsBet. Approximately 1 billion dollars of revenue was generated from the 5-year contracts signed with these partners. For the same reason, we're now seeing a lot more betting ads and promotions during games and other NFL events. Moreover, these ads use famous NFL stars: Kevin Hart and David Ortiz have already starred in multiple promos for DraftKings.
These sponsorships naturally enable the NFL to obtain more funds and cause the advertising landscape to change. Considering the league's strict stance against gambling in the past, we can say that this is a pretty radical change. Some even accuse the league of hypocrisy: a few years ago, the NFL was completely against gambling and based its policies on this stance.
We don't want to take part in the debate about whether this is hypocrisy, but we can say that taking advantage of something that was previously illegal once it becomes legal is not a bad thing, especially considering the potential for funds that this will create. Sponsorship deals are not the only thing that legal sports betting brings; viewership numbers are also increasing. To give a simple example:
As the number of viewers increases, we can easily say that advertising companies will focus more on the NFL and brands other than betting operators will also fund the league. But of course, the locomotive of this will be betting companies. It's no surprise that the Super Bowl is being held in Las Vegas for the first time this year: analysts predict that the legalized sports betting market will reach a size of $12 billion by 2025, and NFL will be the most popular league.
The NFL hasn't done a very good job of adapting its rules and policies to its new stance. Just because sports betting is legal and supported by the league does not mean that players and team employees can try their luck too. After betting was legalized, many players and employees were punished for violating this rule. These include many names such as Quintez Cephus, C.J. Moore, Shaka Toney, Calvin Ridley, Josh Shaw, Stanley Berryhill, and Jameson Williams.
Not all of these players were penalized for betting on the NFL: some tried their luck in different leagues, such as the NBA, but did so while inside an NFL facility. The NFL claims to educate 17,000 people on its policies each year, but perhaps it's time to reconsider that training: players and team employees appear to be confused about it.