Betting on Engagement: The Influence of Sports Betting on Viewership

16 min read
Oct 16, 2024, 1:26 PM

Abstract

When legal sports gambling started to become the norm in the United States it was widely assumed it would help driver interest and ratings.

After all, when sports fans are financially invested in an outcome it’s intuitive that they would tune in to see what happens, and there is data to support this idea from the rise of fantasy sports in years past. According to a study done using ESPN survey data (Nesbit et al, 2010) avid fans watch an average of 2.85 more MLB games — or 1.07 more NFL games — if they are fantasy participants.

While it’s tempting to assume that premise carries over to gambling neatly, it’s worth remembering that TV viewership is both difficult to measure in the streaming age, and driven by a myriad of factors. 

For example, NFL ratings have been relatively flat in recent years with last season’s average viewership (17.90 million) closely mirroring 2010’s number (17.87 million). Meanwhile WNBA ratings have exploded in 2024, nearly tripling the previous season’s average with merchandise sales up 236%.

The popularity of different sports can fluctuate for various reasons that have nothing to do with betting, which makes it important to navigate correlational data with caution. 

This research aims to take a close look at the relationship between sports betting and viewership while analyzing other aspects of how betting is affecting the sports watching experience like gambling advertising, in-play betting, and the impact of betting exposure to young viewers.

Relationship between sports betting and viewership

As mentioned above, it can be difficult to precisely figure out the degree to which sports betting drives viewership, but there are some studies that provide persuasive data suggesting that gambling is a significant factor.

In 2020, consulting firm Altman Solon used survey data from 14,000 respondents from countries around the world on sports betting and viewership habits and discovered an extremely strong relationship between the two. While results varied on a country-to-country basis, in every case bettors were far more likely to regularly watch sporting events than fans who did not bet.

In 2022 the Variety Intelligence Platform and market research firm released a study on how sports betting drives engagement and discovered some revelatory findings. The report asked fans of various sports whether they watched more sports when they had made a bet and there was an increase across sports with a notable surge for NFL fans.

Another interesting finding was that 27 percent of fans 18 or older had found new rooting interests through gambling. That number was relatively consistent across generations, too, with millennials on the high end (30%) and Gen X on the low end (22%).

Sports betting motivates fans to watch either because of their own bets or a rooting interest derived from their betting activity could be industry-changing for a sports ecosystem that is facing headwinds due to the decline of television.

Altman Solon released another study in 2023 that estimated that total TV time will decline by 15-20% by 2040 due to the rise of Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s primarily online media diet. If that is the case, sports betting could be an important counterweight to that trend for major sports leagues.

In-Play Betting and Viewer Engagement

With sports fans watching events because of their gambling behavior to some degree it’s unsurprising that in-play betting has become a critical part of the viewing experience for many. A 2024 International Betting Integrity Association’s study on the availability of sports betting products estimated that 47% of all bets placed this year will be in-play wagers.

This form of betting is likely to keep viewers engaged in games, even if they become uncompetitive. In the Variety Intelligence Platform data referenced above, there was a significant split in bettors when it came to paying attention to ‘blowout’ games depending on whether they had bet.

Condition

Stop watching the game

Continue watching the game but pay less attention 

Continue watching the game and pay attention like it were a close game

Bet

25%

49%

29%

No Bet

10%

41%

49%

In-play betting is likely to drive this type of behavior because the wagers are by definition related to exclusively what is happening in the current game — and some of the most common bet types like point spreads and over/under aren’t resolved until an event concludes.

A qualitative interview-based study from the Journal of Gambling Studies (Killick et al, 2020) supports this notion. Below are a couple of representative quotations from its participants:

null
‘With in-play, you’re more invested in it. You can place sports bets that are in the future and if you do that, I don’t know about other people, but I can place a bet over a span of a few days and then forget about it and come back to it and think ‘oh, it lost’. Whereas in-play you’re more invested in what you’re watching anyway. So it’s not very often you would place an in-play sports bet and not be watching the play happen.’
null
“I’ll only in-play bet if I’m actually watching the football because the idea, or the one good thing about in-play betting is that you can put a bet on before the match but you realize that ten minutes in that it’s not going the way that I thought it would and the team that I expected to win are actually not playing particularly well at all and it looks like the other teams are going to win and put on another bet.”

While sports leagues and broadcasters may see clear value in the added engagement, there are significant drawbacks as there’s evidence that in-play betting drives problem gambling more than other wagering types.

A recent study (Gainsbury et al 2020) found that bettors who made in-play wagers had a far higher Problem Gambling Severity Index score (8.76) than those who did not (3.68). To put those scores in perspective, numbers between 1 and 4 are considered ‘low’ risk severity while anything over 8 is considered ‘problematic’.

There are also indications that in-play betting has notable partial correlations with behaviors like increased junk food consumption and alcohol intake even controlling for PGSI scores (Lopez-Gonzalez et al 2018).

That could create a vicious cycle for bettors as there is evidence to suggest that alcohol consumption can lead to more in-play betting and resulting financial loss. A recent psychosocial study (Kim et al 2023) found that using alcohol and making  in-play bets at the same time was associated with an estimated 9.8× increase in the likelihood of experiencing in-play betting-related financial harms.

Influence of Gambling Advertising on Betting Behavior

Not only is sports betting to some degree driving viewership, it’s changing the experience for sports fans through its advertising.

The degree to which sports fans are bombarded by sportsbook commercials varies by region, but as an instructive example the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation collaborated with the University of Bristol (Wheaton et al 2024) found there was some kind of gambling advertisement once every 2.8 minutes and the messages accounted for approximately one fifth of all viewing time.

Not only do a number of fans report qualitative dissatisfaction with the quantity of gambling advertising they see, there is data supporting a relationship between advertising exposure and problem gambling.

A massive study drawing 30,000 survey respondents from the Norwegian Population Registry (Syvertsen et al, 2021) found a significant difference in the amount of gambling advertising exposure between problem gamblers and those who were classified as ‘non-problem’ by the Canadian Problem Gambling Index.

Participants were asked to rate their exposure over the past 12 months across a variety of mediums on a five-point scale where each number had the following meaning:

  1. Never
  2. Less than once a month
  3. Monthly
  4. Weekly
  5. Approximately daily

The results were as follows:

Medium

Problem Gamblers

Non-Problem Gamblers

TV

3.61

3.48

Internet

3.75

3.05

Newspaper

2.35

2.05

Retail

3.43

3.15

Direct

3.08

1.87

Total Advertising 

3.26

2.72

This correlational data doesn’t prove causation, but it is supported by other studies such as Wardle et al 2022 that found nearly one-third of bettors (31.2%) report that gambling marketing had prompted unplanned wagering.

Gambling operators appear to be acting with this information in mind. 

A study of advertising during the 2018 World Cup (Newell et al 2019) discovered that the live odds bookmakers promoted on advertisements had an average decimal odds of 7.4 (or +640 in American odds) which come with an implied probability of 13.5% — meaning they were far less likely to hit than the average wager. 

While some bets at those odds can theoretically be good value, they are extremely likely to be profitable for the sportsbook. By promoting them during sporting events they may entice bettors to make poor decisions using the persuasive power of advertising. 

Gambling Exposure and Its Impact on Young Viewers

While there are concerns related to the increased prevalence of gambling and gambling advertising across the general population, that’s especially true when it comes to young viewers.

Research from GambleAware in 2020 indicates that in the United Kingdom gambling marketing is ubiquitous — even for children well below the legal age of participation. Here are some highlights our the findings:

  • 96% of the 11-24 year old participants had been exposed to gambling marketing messages in the last month
  • 85% aged 11-24 reported seeing gambling advertising on TV (including national lottery advertisements)
  • 70% of children and young people noticed gambling advertisements in betting shops, window displays, and promotions on shop floors.
  • 66% reported seeing gambling promotions on their social media channels, that were most likely to be in the form of video adverts while watching clips on YouTube or Facebook

A study of the exposure of gambling advertisements to Australians 11-16 (Thomas et al, 2018) yielded similar results as 96.1% recalled seeing some kind of gambling marketing, 91.0% reported seeing it on television and 71.2% said they observed it during sporting events they were watching.

Matching these exposure metrics to actual usership is impossible to do conclusively because of the illegality of underage gambling — leading to unreliable data and self-reporting. Even so, based on the relationship between advertising and behavior it seems fair to conclude that the ever present marketing of gambling is having an effect.

Interestingly, there is evidence to suggest that young people are both wise to this phenomenon, and not in favor of it. An Australian study (Pitt et al, 2022) on the attitudes of people between the ages of 11 and 17 on gambling yielded some insightful quotations:

null
‘I feel like they might target young people ‘cause they’re a bit vulnerable, we’re coming in and learning, try to find our place in the world kind of thing. So maybe they should focus on showing the real thing rather than encouraging us to do it, which is obviously what they want to do to promote their company.’
null
‘If there’s anything we can do, I suggest we at least limit the ads…. So many people are just getting snared in gambling every day. It’s just not cool. I don’t find it very cool. I feel like we should do that but I don’t know anybody who would do it because it’s difficult.’

‘If there were as many ads showing people that have had their lives stuffed up because of gambling, as there were ads telling you to do gambling, then I feel like it would be a much less harmful place.’

Efforts to Restrict Gambling Advertising

The variety of concerns surrounding the prevalence of gambling advertising has led to a number of efforts to restrict it around the globe.

Some of those have been undertaken voluntarily, such as the NFL making the decision to limit the number of sportsbook advertisements to six per game and minimize the iGaming industry’s footprint at the most recent Super Bowl to three ads.

The English Premier League has also been proactive with the decision to remove gambling sponsorships from the front of their matchday shirts by the end of the 2025-26 season. That step has been undermined to some extent by the fact that 11 of the EPL’s 20 teams still have gambling sponsorship on their shirts — and the league recently came under scrutiny for advertising gambling on pages targeted to or featuring people under the age of 18.

Counting on professional leagues to limit possible income streams in the name of the public good is unlikely to be a reliable strategy, leading governments to step in, or at least get pushed to by their constituents. In some cases, such as the Netherlands and Belgium, that resulted in near-complete bans. More often than not, the goal is limiting gambling advertisements rather than eliminating them.

Below are some examples of recent regulatory efforts around the world:

United States

Democratic congressman Paul Tonko of New York and Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut introduced a comprehensive sports betting reform bill (the SAFE Bet Act) in September that would stop gambling operators from running ads between the hours of 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. and during live sporting events. 

  • The bill has numerous provisions limiting the iGaming industry and as of publication there doesn’t seem to be much momentum for turning this proposed legislation into law.
United Kingdom

With a Labour government taking the reins as of July, there has been pressure applied to the new administration to impose tighter restrictions on gambling advertising. 

  • A Peers for Gambling Reform summit in September that featured the participation of a number of MPs called on culture secretary, Lisa Nandy to get to work on the issue — and just over two weeks later a Survation poll found that 51% of respondents agreed that ‘all gambling advertising, promotion, and sponsorship should be banned’. Whether this sentiment leads to tangible action remains to be seen, but the foundation for reform is being laid.
Australia

In September Sky News reported that the Labor Party government was planning to introduce a ban on online gambling advertising, but nothing happened on that front in the month following the report. This caused Australian Greens to put forward a bill entitled the ‘Ban Gambling Ads Bill to the country’s Senate on October 9. 

  • The Greens have limited power in the chamber (11 of 76 senators) and will need significant support from more other parties for the bill to progress. As of the publication of this research, the situation is ongoing. 
Canada, Ontario

The only legal sports betting market in the country — issued a ban on the use of celebrity endorsements in gambling advertisements that went into effect in February. This doesn’t explicitly limit advertising, but the goal is to put downward pressure on its effectiveness.

  • There is a loophole that allows celebrities to appear in advertisements if they are ‘advocating for responsible gambling practices’ which could take some of the teeth out of it.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that the growth of legal sports betting is having a significant impact on the sports viewing experience. 

Both leagues and broadcasters are likely to welcome this change as it brings in advertising revenue in two ways. Firstly, it has the potential to put upwards pressure on ratings — and as a result increase the price of advertising slots. It has also created a new class of potential advertisers that have shown a willingness to heavily invest in sports broadcasts.

These benefits to the industry come with associated costs that are difficult to quantify in definite terms. There is evidence to suggest that sports fans are dissatisfied with what they perceive as an oversaturation of gambling advertising — and that advertising seems like it may help drive problematic gambling behavior in some cases.

Of particular concern is how constant exposure to gambling marketing may affect children who are just beginning to form their opinions on betting and the risks associated with it. These worries have resulted in action for a few markets, and it will be interesting to monitor how that pushback evolves in the years to come.

The age of normalized gambling content is relatively new, and it’s still not entirely clear how it will affect the world of professional sports in the long term. What we already know is that its entrenched presence already shows signs of having clear benefits and meaningful drawbacks. How those are balanced will determine how healthy the addition of legal betting will ultimately be to the sports ecosystem.

References

Sources
History
Nesbit et al
2010
The Impact of Fantasy Sports on Television Viewership
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08997761003590721?scroll=top&needAccess=true
Sports Business Journal
2024
NFL sees best average viewership since 2015
https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/01/09/nfl-viewership
ESPN
2024
WNBA earns record TV ratings for 1st month, near-record attendance
https://www.espn.com/wnba/story/_/id/40326422/wnba-earns-record-tv-ratings-1st-month-record-attendance
Altman Solon
2021
Sports Betting Gains Global Popularity and Is Transforming the Industry
https://www.altmansolon.com/insights/sports-betting-content-consumption
Variety
2022
How Sports Betting Is Improving Engagement With Televised Games
https://variety.com/2022/sports/tech/how-sports-betting-is-driving-fan-engagement-viewership-1235460169/
Altman Solon
2023
Altman Solon's Global Sports Survey
https://www.altmansolon.com/2023-global-sports-survey
IBIA
2024
The Availability of Sports Betting Products: An Economic and Integrity Analysis
https://canadiangaming.ca/wp-content/uploads/IBIA-Report-2024_FINAL-TEXT_SINGLE_AW.pdf
Gainsbury et al
2020
The Relationship Between In-Play Betting and Gambling Problems in an Australian Context of Prohibited Online In-Play Betting
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.574884/full
Killick et al
2020
Why Do Individuals Engage in In-Play Sports Betting? A Qualitative Interview Study
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10899-020-09968-9
Gonzalez Lopez et al
2018
In-Play Betting, Sport Broadcasts, and Gambling Severity: A Survey Study of Spanish Sports Bettors
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2167479518816338
Kim et al
2023
Dispositional and Contextual Correlates of In-Play Betting & Related Harms: A 2-Week Ecological Momentary Assessment Study
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37535553/
Wheaton et al
2024
Exploring the prevalence of gambling marketing: The Prevalence of Marketing Across Televised and Social Media Coverage
https://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/business-school/documents/Exploring_the_Prevelance_of_Gambling_Marketing_UoB_CBCNews.pdf
New York Magazine
2023
The Sports-Betting Ads Are Awful, and They’re Not Going Away
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/04/the-sports-betting-ads-are-awful-and-theyre-not-going-away.html
Syvertsen et al
2021
Relationships Between Exposure to Different Gambling Advertising Types, Advertising Impact and Problem Gambling
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10899-021-10038-x
American Psychological Association
Canadian Problem Gambling Index
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Ft00772-000
Wardle et al
2022
The association between gambling marketing & unplanned gambling spend: Findings from two online cross-sectional surveys
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306460322002064?via%3Dihub
Newell et al
2019
Live-odds gambling advertising and consumer protection
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0216876&type=printable
GambleAware
2020
The effect of gambling advertising on children, young people and vulnerable adults
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/effect-gambling-advertising-children-young-people-and-vulnerable-adults
Thomas et al
2018
Young people’s awareness of the timing and placement of gambling advertising on traditional and social media platforms
https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12954-018-0254-6
Pitt et al
2022
Young people in Australia discuss strategies for preventing the normalisation of gambling and reducing gambling harm
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12889-022-13201-0
Associated Press
2024
NFL says Super Bowl viewers will only see 3 sports betting ads during broadcast of the game
https://apnews.com/article/super-bowl-las-vegas-sports-betting-advertisements-6a2852789db874e677657aa209ae6a04
Premier League
2023
Premier League statement on gambling sponsorship
https://www.premierleague.com/news/3147426
The Guardian
2024
Half of Premier League clubs breaking code on gambling ads for children
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/sep/26/premier-league-clubs-code-on-advertising-gambling-under-18s
Lottery Daily
2023
Advertising bans come into force in Belgium and the Netherlands
https://lotterydaily.com/2023/07/03/regulation/belgium-netherlands-ad-ban/
Associated Press
2024
Bill would ban sports betting ads during games and forbid bets on college athletes -
https://apnews.com/article/sports-betting-federal-regulation-gambling-addiction-f2b39386d1f8cf6bcd37136762a4a076
The Guardian
2024
Under-pressure Labor refuses to commit to new gambling ad legislation before election
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/oct/09/advocates-say-limited-gambling-ads-still-triggering-as-greens-urge-blanket-ban
The Greens
2024
Greens introduce gambling ads ban today in Senate test for Labor & Liberal
https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/greens-introduce-gambling-ads-ban-today-senate-test-labor-liberal
CTV News
2024
Ontario ban on use of celebrities in gambling ads begins today
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-ban-on-use-of-celebrities-in-gambling-ads-begins-today-1.6787284
CEGA
2024
Time for action as poll finds over half the public want gambling ads banned
https://cega.org.uk/time-for-action-as-poll-finds-over-half-the-public-want-gambling-ads-banned/
The Guardian
2023
AFL fans back gambling advertising ban and caution against three-year delay
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/30/afl-fans-back-gambling-advertising-ban-and-caution-against-three-year-delay
<p>Nick has been fascinated with sports since he was first taken to a Toronto Maple Leafs game back in 1998, and he's written about them professionally since 2014.</p><p>Nick has covered baseball and hockey for outlets like The Athletic, Sportsnet, and Yahoo Sports, and his sports betting expertise has grown since its legalization in Ontario in 2022.&nbsp;</p><p>Between 2022 and 2023 he worked for a betting startup called NorthStar Bets, and in 2024 he contributed to Oddspedia before joining the RG team.</p>
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