As several states have been making significant progress towards legalizing sports betting, professional sports leagues are starting to warm up to the prospect of mixing gambling and sports. Leagues like the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB are all starting to realize how popular sports betting is and how much revenue potential there is.
Now that they’ve made this discovery, they are eager to support sports betting legislation, especially when it includes language that reserves a portion of revenue for the leagues involved. Sports leagues are almost certainly personally motivated by financial gain, but their stance on sports betting does help the industry as a whole.
When it comes to sports betting and placing wagers, most bettors focus on the Big Four of professional American sports. These include basketball (the NBA), football (the NFL), hockey (the NHL), and baseball (the MLB). These four leagues have also been the most outspoken about their support for legal sports betting.
Even though those sports leagues are most prominent, that doesn’t mean they’re the only ones interested in a slice of the pie. Just this past Friday, the racing league of NASCAR announced their partnership with Genius Sports.
Genius Sports is one of the world leaders when it comes to sports data. Their entire purpose is to develop technology to better provide data and statistics relating to sports. This partnership is extremely important because it signals that NASCAR is looking to develop their own official app or service to accept wagers through.
NASCAR might have had some encouragement from external sources, as sportsbook FanDuel recently announced their intentions to offer live-streamed games on their mobile betting application. With NASCAR’s partnership with Genius Sports, there is a possibility that the wager-placing service they create may have some form of live streaming available similar to FanDuel’s setup.
This new agreement marks the first time NASCAR has made any advances towards sports betting. Much of this stems from the belief that offering the ability to legally place bets on NASCAR events will help engage current fans while also drawing in new ones. Hockey has also pursued sports betting for the same reason, and it does seem to be working.
The specifics of what NASCAR and Genius Sports will produce are still unclear, but they will certainly create a service that lets you place wagers on NASCAR events while also providing you with important information about it.
