The National Football League (NFL) in the United States of America is one of the sports leagues with the highest revenue and the most valuable teams worldwide. Their huge revenue has resulted in quite lucrative player salaries and administrative fees. This can be attributed to the NFL stakeholders being very good business men and coming up with a strong and productive business model that meets the high demands that come with running a professional football league. The NFL’s sources of revenue are listed as either National Revenue or Local Revenue. National revenue sources include TV deals, merchandising and licensing. Local revenue typically comes from corporate sponsors, ticket sales and concessions.
Worldwide and across numerous sports, sports betting companies are known for their affinity to sponsoring and funding teams. Sports leagues that used to be wary of gambling entities swooping in and making their games betting commodities, putting their integrity to question are slowly starting to embrace this lucrative opportunity. Football in the USA has not been left behind and has slowly started embracing the legalization of sports betting on the NFL. This has prompted USA’s best sports betting sites, such as you can see on legalbettingsites.info, to take action and bid for sponsorship contracts with various teams.
Changing trends
The NFL has always been against gambling. Recent developments have however seen States such as West Virginia legalizing gambling on the NFL. This came after the Supreme Court gave states the power to determine whether to legalize sports betting. Many states have already legalized sports gambling and if this were to spread across the whole of the US, this could prove to be one of the most viable sources of NFL revenue through deals and contracts with betting companies and sports books. While teams are allowed to make their own casino deals, specific to their teams, the NFL is officially in partnership with Caesar’s Casinos and Draft Kings. Online gambling is a vast and profitable industry and is therefore an ideal option to be considered by the NFL. They are to exploit this avenue by partnering with established casinos, setting up betting shops and parlours in their stadiums and set up NFL specific online gambling portals. Sports betting funding football in the USA is a fairly new theme that is yet to weather the trials of time, but has already shown its massive potential in the few implementations we have seen.
How sports betting funds Football
Partnerships with established Casinos
The NFL is well regarded for its sound Business Model and the innovativeness behind it. The NFL continues American football export drive to UK, and this has added to their immense profits. It makes money from corporate sponsors who pay them to display their logos on sports uniforms, their merchandise, the stands and TV transitions. The revenue here is considerable as the NFL made over $1.3 billion from sponsorships. The most lucrative deal here comes with the naming rights for the NFL Stadiums as with the Met Life Stadium that is worth $19 million annually. In 2018, the NFL went public with their official casino sponsor being Caesar’s Entertainment, this however did not include sports betting. Recent amendments have now made it possible for clubs to go into negotiations with casinos over stadium naming rights. This is especially being considered for the revelled Raiders who are bound to Las Vegas. Teams are also now be able to accept and broadcast advertisement deals from casinos during pre-season game telecasts. These deals are known to rake in quite a large bit of NFL revenue and are expected to surge with the arrival of sports betting companies. There is however mild restriction, where casinos may not explicitly promote their respective sports books using the available team partnerships. In these partnerships teams will not be allowed to accept shares for spurring business in casinos and gambling websites. This however does not in any way dwindle the massive benefits that the league is going to reap from this endeavour with sports betting.
Stadium betting lounges
From the start of the 2020 season, the NFL allows teams from states with legalized betting to have physical betting lounges. These lounges will however not have betting windows and will not take physical bets of any kind. The lounges can however sport the sponsors’ signage and have screens showing the odds and bets. Customers will be allowed to sign up customers in these lounges that will be confined to the “Upper Bowl” area of the stadium. The lounges will also serve as a designation for people who want to do mobile betting off their smartphones. These lounges are funded by the sports betting companies in partnership with the teams and are one way the football league clubs are raising revenue.
Benefits of Sports Betting Partnerships
The legalization of sports betting stands to be quite lucrative and beneficial for the NFL. Projected earnings show that the NFL could earn $2.3 billion from sports gambling in the US market. Sports betting is set to increase sponsorship by 7%, tickets sales by a margin of 6% and fees from media rights by 18%. The deal with Caesar’s Entertainment brought in $30 million in exchange for the rights to use NFL trademarks to promote their services at The Super Bowl, NFL drafts and other league events. This can be seen in the partnership between Philadelphia Eagles and Caesar’s Philadelphia Casino. Caesar’s Entertainment also recently signed a deal to sponsor D.C. United which might see the logo “Caesar’s sports” placed on their jerseys. These contracts, partnerships and sponsorships are quite the adequate financial supplement for NFL clubs. Thanks to this funding, the clubs are able to comfortably meet administrative fees, running costs, maintenance costs and the huge player salaries. The slow adoption of gambling as a source of revenue for the football leagues in the USA is therefore a welcome alternative due to its worth, reliability and promising nature
Conclusion
While many are still sceptical about sports betting funding league games, especially with football in the USA, this may well be the answer to future financial woes. The partnerships with these franchise betting companies are quite lucrative, stable and ideal for the football league in the USA in spite of the many regulations still in place. Sports betting is taking over the football league in the USA. It is a major force and an ever growing market that has demonstrated its potential in how it has funded major leagues in the United Kingdom and Africa. The NFL embracing the legalization of sports betting in various states in the USA is a promising venture. They have once again found a productive and lucrative way to strengthen their business model. With the continued legalization of sports betting in many states in the USA, we expect to see more sports betting signage on player jerseys, stadium stands, stadium lounges, league merchandise and TV transitions.
