English Premier League Weighs In On America’s Sports Betting Legalization Debate
The NBA was the first of the major professional sports leagues to do a 180 degree shift on the concept of legalized sports betting in the USA, but Major League Baseball soon joined up as well, and other premier organizations have as well.
Count the English Premier League among that number. Adrian Ford, the general manager of Football DataCo, the UK firm that holds the right to the country’s top professional soccer league – one of the richest and most prolific in the entire world – is being cited in an ESPN report as having the back of the NBA and MLB in their efforts to influence sports betting policy. Primarily, the English Premier League empathizes with the leagues’ stated desire to get a cut of the money changing hands between sports bettors and the sportsbooks at which they are placing their wagers.
If it sounds a little bit like how a mafia organization extorts money in the form of “protection” for a business owner, then you are not thinking too far off base here.
“We would not see why there would be an issue about sports getting a return from betting,” Ford is quoted by ESPN as having said. “We’d echo some of the high-level statements the NBA has made. If someone is making money off us, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be interested in that and why we shouldn’t have some level of involvement in the commercial return.”
Coming on board immediately after the huge swell in betting action on the 2018 edition of the Masters Tournament, the US PGA Tour, joined the collective lobbying effort set up by the other two American leagues to get individual states to pass sports betting legalization favorable to the leagues’ interests. The leagues are primarily trying to get several things out of the nearly one dozen states they have operatives working in: exclusive rights to bettor data, control over what kinds of bets can be placed and on what sporting events, a large say in regulatory practices and so called “integrity fees.” That this last part basically amounts to a 1 percent skim off the top of all handle (or roughly 20 percent of the sportsbooks’ gross adjusted revenues) has been the downfall of more widespread adoption of the leagues’ “blueprint” by states as different from each other as Kansas, West Virginia and New York.
Ford told ESPN’s reporting staff that the English Premier League’s official position is that what their American counterparts are asking for – talking about integrity fees here – is “fundamentally wrong,” so long as an arrangement or a framework can be put together that is agreeable to lawmakers, sports betting operators and the leagues in question.
Understanding the English Premier League’s unique context vis a vis legal sports betting is crucial to making sense of Ford’s seemingly blithe take on the American leagues’ efforts to get paid extra for no extra work on their part by the gambling business actually doing work. The English Premier League, for its part, operates inside a legal context where sports betting is widely available and 100 percent legal in almost every population center and online everywhere, as the UK has a very liberal stance on gambling generally and actively promotes sports betting – practically the completely opposite situation as the US. Her Majesty’s Government has had an agreement with the English Premier League since 1992 that does get the league a sizeable chunk of change in data licensing rights even if it does not get a cut from the handle taken in by UK bookies.
That said, individual soccer clubs inside the English Premier League can strike up individual deals with betting shops – and they do. Indeed, fully nine squads emblazon the fronts of their jerseys with the names of what we like to call “legal offshore sports betting sites” and what the pro leagues and legislators like the erroneously call “black market site.” That arrangement works both ways as well, seeing as UK-based online sportsbooks like Bet365 own entire teams: Stoke City in Bet365’s case.
While integrity fees or their equivalent are not on the table in the UK, other countries inside the Anglosphere definitely do make that accommodation, so the US leagues are not off base nor off their collective rocker for a slice of the pie like they are doing in statehouses around the country. The governments of Australia and New Zealand, along with France (which is obviously outside the English-speaking world, but we digress), both require their sports betting businesses to pay fees to the leagues in their countries based on the handle as well. With that kind of evidence on hand it is clear to see where the NBA, PGA Tour and the MLB might be getting some inspiration for their plans for a legalized sports betting market in the US in a world where the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA).
That’s right: all these plans and all the support the leagues are getting from prominent overseas counterparts like the English Premier league simply won’t count for much if the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t declare PASPA unconstitutional. A decision in New Jersey’s case against the unpopular (and by now largely toothless) law is expected soon – as in within a few weeks soon. Former Garden State Gov. Chris Christie, who actually first brought the case to the highest court in the land, has gone on record as saying that he doesn’t expect a decision until June.
New Jersey passed a law of its own back in 2013 to offer regulated sports betting options for visitors at Atlantic City casinos and online via smartphone mobile betting apps, leading other states to start thinking along the same lines.
As far as what the English Premier League thinks about sports betting’s legalization here in the Land of the Free, who cares, right? Wrong. If sports betting takes off in a newly legal marketplace, then the British soccer leader could try to get involved more heavily in the US market as far as games, advertising and so on. Additionally, if the NBA, Major League and other taggers along can get a huge cut in the form of integrity fees then it could help the English Premier League to lobby for the same kind of rent-seeking back home in Blighty.
And who knows – maybe NBA Commish Adam Silver will write the London Daily Telegraph’s sports desk and give his two cents about why Her Majesty should compel her country’s sportsbooks to pay the English Premier League. It all really depends on how the U.S. Supreme Court decides to rule in the New Jersey case. The states looking to regulate sports betting in their own jurisdictions will also have to agree to go along with the leagues’ plan, which, as we have already seen on numerous occasions, is not a sure thing.
The English Premier League’s Ford, for all his support of the NBA and the other American pro sports organizations, agreed that there is a long road ahead.
"Ultimately, the common goal -- and it is easier said than done -- must be to have a functioning, regulated, safe betting market that brings all the offshore money onshore for the good of the sport, for the protection of the players and presumably for the good of the states that are going to get tax revenues," Ford told ESPN.
LegalGamblingUSA.com agrees with him in spirit, if not in fact. These are complicated decisions lawmakers across the country are considering, so it will be a balancing act. We just hope that for the sake of the sportsbooks that the leagues don’t tip the teeter totter of legislation too much in their favor or the taxpayers could miss out. Too many extra fees on the bookies’ backs and the players they would like to bring in will just stick to the offshore betting sites they are already using without any problems and where they can get better odds and bigger payouts.
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