'We're in the infancy here': As new wave of NFL bettors watch, game broadcasts neglect them
It hasn’t taken long to measure just how colossal the long-stifled secret of public gambling on the NFL has become.
While backdoor bookmaking remains a thriving independent business, U.S. states that have legalized mobile sports betting reported a staggering $5 billion-plus in activity for September – $1 billion alone in New Jersey.
And the NFL reportedly expects $270 million in revenue this year from new alliances it struck with mobile betting operations DraftKings, FanDuel, Caesars Sportsbook, BetMGM, Sportsbook, Fox Bet and WynnBET, according to The Washington Post.
Yet, with all that cash streaming through the nation on betting apps and partnerships, NFL broadcasters are still wrapping their arms around how best to insert live betting developments into their respective game broadcasts.
A recent example drove the point home during the Packers-Cardinals matchup on Thursday Night Football. The over-under for points scored was established at 50.5 before the game.
Leading 24-21 late in the fourth quarter, Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers led his team to a first-and-goal at the Cardinals’ 1-yard line. Three running plays, a delay-of-game penalty and an incomplete pass later, the under 50.5 remarkably remained in play with Green Bay's inability to score.
Arizona quarterback Kyler Murray took his turn, moving the Cardinals 94 yards to the Packers’ 5-yard line and into field-goal position. A successful kick would have sealed the over.
With 15 seconds remaining, however, Murray threw a pass to the end zone that was intercepted, effectively ending the game and clinching an astounding betting victory for those on the under.
Sports books, including Tipico Sportsbook, reported that the game was among the top this season in Thursday Night Football betting traffic.
Yet, from FOX’s top broadcast team of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, there was not a word during either drive regarding the over-under. Despite the association with FOX Bet, no graphic mentioning the game’s significant secondary drama was posted.
Similarly, during a Patriots-Chargers game Oct. 31, the 50.5 over total was dramatically chased down in the fourth quarter, which began with Los Angeles leading 17-16.
A pick-six interception by the Patriots was followed by a New England field goal – and to the over bettors’ delight, Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert threw a touchdown pass with 40 seconds remaining. The extra point brought the total to 51.
A meaningful turn of events was ignored by the CBS broadcast team.
Just as there was a disconnect on Murray’s picked-off pass to A.J. Green, there was something lagging between the networks and their respective attentions to a substantial portion of their viewers.
Contacted by USA Today Sports+, multiple network spokespeople shied from the topic. Both ESPN and CBS declined to specify their attention to betting during broadcasts, as did a FOX official after another individual at the network said the topic at this point was something each crew could treat in an “organic” manner of their choosing.
Each NFL broadcaster – NBC with PointsBet, ESPN and CBS with Caesars Sportsbook and FOX with FOXBet – has a betting partner with which to confer.
It’s now been more than three years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federal ban on sports betting that existed in the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992, opening the floodgates of legalized betting that is expanding by the hour.
“Once the Supreme Court ruling came down, the landscape changed,” said Trey Wingo, the former veteran ESPN host who moved on to Caesars Sportsbook as its Chief Trends Officer and brand ambassador. “It’s just the new normal and whether Pollyanna-ish people like it or not is irrelevant.
"It’s here. The genie’s not going back in the bottle, so the people who figure out the best way to use it will be the smartest ones and attract the most eyeballs.”
Distinguished football broadcasters Al Michaels and Brent Musburger have long made at least passing references to point spreads and totals – Michaels formerly speaking code to bettors by saying a late touchdown was “overwhelming.”
And while the betting sites are mentioned in pregame shows with sponsored discussions of point spreads with occasional halftime-line graphics, commentary related to the game's on-field happenings widely trumps the broadcasters’ attention to the widespread gambling action on it.
Longtime ESPN anchor Kenny Mayne, also now employed by Caesars Sportsbook as a content contributor and brand ambassador, said rewarding the complete audience – and not those only locked in on the purity of the competition – is in the networks’ best interests.
“It would be for the gamblers’ good if they did this because so many people have action on the games. Ten bucks with their friend. Legally. Illegally. It’s just kind of more fun to have action on an event," Mayne said. “I don’t think we’re corrupting society on this. The horse kind of left the barn a long time ago with people liking to bet on football. Would it improve the telecast now that everyone is talking about that aspect of it? It might. But I think it’s going to be channel by channel deciding, ‘When do we cross that line, as well?’
“We’ve already crossed the line to a certain degree. Hell, the NFL itself is in bed with a bunch of gambling properties. Now, do we really, really cross the line? I would say it all depends on if there’s money to be made.”
There is, of course, and it’s being made as we speak.
Meanwhile, combat sports have taken a stronger initiative into folding betting information into broadcasts.
Showtime’s pay-per-view broadcast of Canelo Alvarez’s undisputed super-middleweight title fight included content from DraftKings. Before that, the premium cable network staged between-fights betting segments during August’s Jake Paul-Tyron Woodley boxing event hosted by Barstool Sportsbook’s Dave Portnoy.
With the encouragement of UFC President Dana White, UFC play-by-play announcer Jon Anik, a self-described “avid” sports gambler, seeks to infuse the fights he calls with betting information at logical entry points.
RELATED: The best way to mix sports betting into a broadcast? Look to boxing
“It’s been nice to see the industry come around because for a while I kind of had to hide the fact I’m a gambler,” Anik said. “The language is in my vernacular, very natural, and it always has been.
“The challenge is – say the producers throw up a graphic showing that the favorite in a fight has switched – there may be too much going on in the fight or I don’t have enough real estate to explain why (the numbers are) relevant. But the betting line is always an interesting lens to watch sports.”
Anik said he can understand how the over-under can be neglected.
“It can be a tricky thing to mention. It has literally nothing to do with the game, but it’s why a huge percentage of your audience is watching that game,” Anik said. So there has to be some conflict there. If (the Packers-Cardinals broadcaster) said, ‘Man, you’ve been sitting on an over ticket this game and you felt pretty good about cashing it … ,’ you’d be the talk of the town for saying it.
"But you might also have a producer in your ear who doesn’t want to hear that noise.”
MORE: 'I love challenges:' Canelo Alvarez makes history, sets sights on lucrative bidding war
Time will likely result in increased betting awareness and more balanced treatment of the bettors’ plight.
At ESPN, for instance, weeknight anchor Scott Van Pelt’s “Bad Beats” has become a tremendously popular staple as he dissects how an outcome turned viciously against bettors – like those who had the Arizona-Green Bay over.
Mayne can recall years ago in Las Vegas when on the ESPN NFL Countdown show he "had to be careful" associating betting with the NFL.
"There was always this concern. ‘How are we gonna frame it?’” Mayne said. "‘Does the NFL look like it’s even tangentially associated with any kind of gambling?’ Now, in a short amount of time – like three years – it's all turned upside down, where people are like, ‘F it, we’re all in. It’s fine now.’”
The NFL has long given a wink and a nod to the ratings support it received from bettors, mostly by mandating injury reports to assist bookmakers with the setting of points spreads and totals.
“I hear longtime NFL people saying, ‘I liked it the way it was,’ things like that … ,” Wingo said. “Bro, you filled out an injury report twice a week. Why did you think you were doing that? And for the people saying the NFL is hypocritical here, no. The NFL is abiding by the law. Betting could only happen in certain places before. Now, it can happen anywhere and it’s up to the states to figure it out.
“The purity thing … you can believe that if you want, but you’re kidding yourself.”
It’d be human nature for some broadcasters who, left to their own devices, want betting on football to be restricted to paid-for segments, not in-game interruptions.
“We all need to understand we’re in the top of the first inning of a whole new world," Wingo said. “Everyone’s going to figure it out the same way: What are our viewers telling us, and where do they want our information to be? The gambling thing is coming. It’s a matter of people adapting to it. Could it have been better? Probably. But we’re in the infancy here.”
Wingo said he can envision scenarios where during the game broadcasters break away to a network betting expert, who, like an NFL rules expert, inserts an explanation of what’s transpiring with the points and why it’s significant to bettors.
“It’s a different thing now and it takes a while to figure it out," Wingo said. “If they figure out how (mentioning) betting will get more eyeballs, they’re going to do it. If they don’t think it will, they’re not going to do it. It’s really that simple.
"It’s that line from ‘All the President’s Men.’ Follow the money. That’ll tell you how it’s going to play out.”