By: Jacob Hartzler
Super Bowl 57 was record-breaking for sportsbooks. According to projections by the American Gaming Association, a record 50.4 million Americans wagered a total of $16 billion on football’s biggest stage. The keys to this development were the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, which granted states the ability to determine the legality of sports betting, and technological advancements in mobile sports betting that made sports betting highly accessible.
In the wake of Murphy, gambling has become synonymous with mainstream sports media coverage. Whether it be live coverage of games, pre-or-post-game analysis, or sport-news articles, it is commonplace to see betting odds posted to the screen or to hear analysts predict which wagers they believe will hit. Some networks have even begun to dedicate entire shows to sports betting. For example, to meet the needs of the growing sports betting market, the New England Sports Network (“NESN”) dedicated two new shows entirely to sports betting. Moreover, advertisements for sports-betting platforms occur with such regularity that viewers can expect to see multiple throughout the duration of a televised game. Though the sports industry now wholeheartedly embraces sports betting, this was not always the case.
In 1992, Congress passed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (“PAPSA”) to prohibit state-sanctioned sports gambling. According to its sponsors, PAPSA was enacted to protect the integrity of sports. PAPSA was aligned with the NFL’s fears that legalized gambling would commingle with match-mixing and corruption, a fear likely induced by prior sports gambling scandals. For this reason, the NFL was opposed to the sports betting industry in the decades leading up to the Murphy decision. During a 2012 deposition, a lawyer for the NFL argued that the league was adamantly opposed to sports gambling based on the belief that it would negatively impact the league’s relationship with fans and the country’s perception of the sport. Today’s NFL takes quite a different approach to the sports betting industry. This begs the question: why the sudden turnaround?
Murphy opened the door to a sports industry that no longer views gambling as a taboo or a threat to the integrity of the game. As of January 2023, thirty-six states (and Washington D.C.) have legalized sports betting in the wake of Murphy. Of those states, twenty-six allow for mobile sports betting. On March 10, 2023, Massachusetts became the newest state to endorse the trend and allow mobile sports betting. There are several policy rationales that support legalizing sports betting including minimizing the black market and significantly increasing tax revenue. In the first ten months of 2022, Americans had legally wagered $73 billion on sports, resulting in an estimated $5.77 billion profit for the sports betting companies and an estimated state and federal government revenue of $1.3 billion.
Though the NFL arguably benefits from the increased fan engagement that comes with sports betting, technological advancements in sports betting are likely the driving force behind the NFL’s stance reversal. Before the legalization of sports gambling and the advent of mobile sports betting, those who wished to place a wager on a sporting event had to find a “bookie” to place their bets with. Mobile sports betting eliminated this barrier by allowing users to place bets directly through their mobile device. This development drastically increased the popularity of sports gambling and pressured the NFL and the greater sports media to adapt.
In the years since Murphy, the NFL has taken an aggressive stance to forge partnerships with betting operators and infuse broadcasts with gambling content. The NFL’s official sports-betting partners—Caesars Sportsbook, DraftKings, and FanDuel—are some of the most well-known and heavily advertised mobile sports betting platforms. The NFL expects to generate approximately $270 million in revenue this year from these partnerships. Some NFL executives anticipate that the sports betting market will grow to a $1 billion-plus league opportunity over the next decade. While each of these platforms offer distinct interfaces, they share a common goal to make sports betting as accessible as possible.
Murphy made these platforms possible, and their existence gave the NFL little choice but to embrace the lucrative business opportunity. The modern era of sports betting has fundamentally changed the relationship between gambling and sports as we know it. While the sports industry in America traditionally viewed sports betting as a threat, the NFL and other major sports organizations would be remiss to fight the growth of the sports betting industry when they stand to benefit the most by partnering with the tech platforms at the forefront of the industry.
The increasing trend among states to legalize sports betting and the advent of mobile sports betting platforms have fundamentally changed the relationship between gambling and sports. Murphy opened the door to these developments and mobile betting platforms such as DraftKings, FanDuel, Caesars Sportsbook, and Barstool’s Gaming App left the NFL with little choice but to embrace the new era of sports betting. After Murphy, the NFL could have either held firm in its stance against sports betting and forgone the lucrative opportunity or embraced it as a new element of the game. To the delight of some and the dismay of others, the NFL and the sports industry at large has chosen the latter.
Student Bio: Jacob Hartzler is a second-year law student at Suffolk University Law School pursuing a JD and an LLM in Taxation. He is a general staff member of the Journal of High Technology Law. In May of 2021, Jacob received a Bachelor of Science Degree from Roger Williams University while completing a Double Major in Legal Studies and History and a Minor in Economics.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are the views of the author alone and do not represent the views of JHTL or Suffolk University Law School.
