The days when Sunday football games would only matter in terms of your team winning feel outdated. With 60% of Americans placing a sports bet in the past year and 31% did so weekly; we have entered an unprecedented time in sports betting history in which everything that happens in the game matters. Whether you’re tracking an NFL touchdown pass, placing a soccer bet, or following March Madness brackets, the outcome of your team’s season isn’t the only thing keeping sports entertaining.
There are impressive statistics around the impact of legal sports wagering, a market that has grown from essentially nothing in 2018 to a market estimated at $120 billion by 2023, reflecting a 27.5% year-over-year increase. Yet, the growth represents a change in viewer behavior, rather than just evidence of a gambling addiction.
In a study through the UK Gambling Commission, Dr. Heather Wardle found that “bet-driven sports engagement” yields a measurable increase in engagement with sports-related media. Yet it is not the age of the consumer that promotes consumption, it is a highly profitable and enticing term, “obsession with betting” that elevates fans’ associations, camaraderie with and emotional investments in games they had previously not cared to access.
What does this look like in practice? Well, imagine watching a Thursday Night Football game between two teams you typically do not care for. Now, let’s assume you had flipped the channel during a commercial, now you have a same-game parlay on the quarterback’s passing yards and the under on the total points. Now you are watching for each play, are curious how many yards the QB is going to throw the ball and you start to check the stats, maybe even learn people’s names, get understandings of the defensive playbook.
That is the change, the difference, the clever part. Sports betting has transformed a ‘fan’ into a ‘student’ of the game.
You can see this in the NFL. Football accounts for 70% of all sports betting handle, and its fanbase has yielded more engagement than any other American sport. The interesting thing is, this wasn’t just existing football fans who are betting more. With betting, we have basically created new football fans.
The Mechanics of Modern Sports Betting
The mechanics of modern sports betting allow for deeper engagement through features that traditional gambling cannot provide:
-Micro-betting opportunities that require engagement during every possession of play.
-Same-game parlays that link multiple outcomes of a single contest.
-Live betting with real-time odds changes that are directly affected by game play as it unfolds.
-Prop betting features that connect the person’s value (i.e. individual performance) directly with his or her personal betting value.
-Social features that allow for ways to participate together for an enhanced social experience.
These are more than bells and whistles. These are engagement options that transform sports from a passive viewership experience into an interactive and socially connected engagement process.
The expansion alone tells a story. With 38 states offering legal sports betting and covering more than half of American adults, we are normalizing what was once an underground activity not even seven years ago.
The Social Change
The social aspect cannot be overstated. Legal sports betting has created new kinds of shared entertainment.
Fantasy football was the trailer, sports betting is the feature presentation. Friends compete for attention in viewing parties to sporting events where they each have different action on the same game. Group chats fill with chatter about bad beats and lucky covers, but no matter the individual differences, the watch experience collectively becomes more communal when everyone has bet and won.
But the social engagement is not just limited to friend groups. Sports bars report higher attendance for major game days, or even games with heavy betting interest, with customers staying longer. Seasoned betting hobbyists report betting makes shared viewing experiences more communal. Individual investment enhances communal viewing.
A Blended Gaming
There are really no more lines between sports betting and traditional casino gaming. Circa 2024, the modern casino is not thinking of sportsbooks as being an add-on but instead is thinking about creating an entertainment environment where guests consider their end-of-week entertainment options with more interest.
Walk into any major gaming casino today in any major market, and you will see an environment that would have been unrecognizable a decade earlier. Guests jumping between a slot machine and a live betting terminal, checking an NBA odds line while standing at a blackjack table, or taking a break from a poker tournament to place a halftime bet. These integrations have been intentional, and casinos have made significant business model shifts to respond to changing consumer preferences.
The financials support the convergence of sports and casino gaming. In 2024, total online gambling revenue was $78.66 billion, and by 2030, the revenue for online gambling (which primarily includes sports betting) is projected to be $153.57 billion, representing a market share of 48% of total online gambling. The story isn’t just about market share. It’s about the positive effects of extensive sports gaming participation on casinos and the trips that players make to casinos. Sports betting is driving increased numbers of guests to casinos and casinos recognize that a player who places a simple football bet also might be interested in the rest of the gaming ecosystem.
Recently casinos have responded by creating hybrid experiences that have not existed before. Casino apps allow players to transition seamlessly between a bet on soccer’s Manchester United and a spin of a slot reel, without having to switch platforms or apps. Today, there are casinos that feature a massive screen showing live betting options while using the same gaming floor space for traditional gaming, where the use of technology and collaborative socializing takes place naturally.
Integration of Technology
Integration of technology is the real story. Everything about a modern casino platform uses the same data feeds in real time, whether it is for sports betting or traditional gaming. A single player account handles sports betting, traditional betting, and traditional gaming. The user experience is gamified rather than categorized in compartments, which ultimately encourages guests to cross-participate between different types of gaming.
The convergence of sports and casino gaming has created what analysts like to describe as a total entertainment model. Players are not just sports bettors or casino gamers. They are seeking entertainment options. The most successful and responsible operators, whether they be engaged online digitally or physically in a brick and mortar casino, recognize this and package everything from daily fantasy contests to live dealer games under one roof.
The result for the player is an experience that feels more like a complete entertainment option, rather than a traditional gambling experience, where it is naturally accepted that, on any given evening you may have dinner, engage in watching a sporting event, participate in social betting with friends and engage in a traditional gaming experience. All are equally important entertainment options, with no one type of option competing for attention and your wallet.
If we were to look at this, we would think that the technology is cleverly integrated. In fact, it is a sophisticated understanding of the psychology of the viewer. Mobile apps give punters the ability to place a wager while determining if they were looking at the score or their last betting slips. Push notifications invite you to consensus markets creating additional options before and during live games likewise informing you that there is likely money to be made through betting. There are real time changes to odds and aggregated buying odds certainly give you at least some understanding of how likely it is that a punt will be successful or not.
Perhaps most significantly, legal gambling doesn’t come with the stigma of underground betting activity that casual audiences would loathe.
Legal sports gambling has not simply added another sports entertainment lens to an old pastime that many once found dangerous. It has created an entirely new category of engaged fan experience in which the value of “watching” is heightened. There is no question it has made watching games personally more engaging for millions of Americans who now have a stake in each and every play.
