• by Joe Mandese , February 9, 2023

Ahead of the Big Game on Sunday, Congressman Paul Tonko (D-NY) Thursday introduced the “Betting on our Future Act” in hopes of advancing new legislation that would ban all online and electronic advertising of sports gambling.

The timing was more than coincidental, because a) the Super Bowl, as well as much of the NFL’s gridiron action, are among the most wagered on spectator sports in America; and b) the Super Bowl in recent years has been a major advertising platform for promoting sports-wagering sites and apps.

“This Sunday, millions of families across the U.S. will tune in to watch the Super Bowl,” Tonko said in a statement unveiling the bill, adding: “Between the plays, the halftime show, and the excitement, tens of millions will be bombarded by ad after ad from DraftKings, FanDuel and others promising so called ‘risk free’ or ‘no sweat’ bets in their ruthless pursuit to get new customers hooked on their products.”

Tonko said he is proposing a new law, because the Supreme Court effectively has legalized sports betting -- including “unfettered advertisements” -- in recent years, and the sports-betting platforms raced in with “billions to ensure they reach every screen across America.

“These ads pose a particularly dangerous threat to adolescents and young adults unaware of the risks involved in gambling, and to individuals prone to addiction.”

Not surprisingly, the TV industry didn’t react -- how should I say this, supportively -- to Tonko’s bill.

“We oppose legislation that bans both mobile sports and casino sportsbook advertising in the United States,” David Donovan, President of the New York State Broadcasters Association, said in a statement responding to the bill’s announcement.

According to Donovan, such advertising is actually a type of public service to viewers, because it “educate[s] consumers in this highly competitive market.”

Yeah, right.

I have no idea whether the bill will gather steam, but I do know that the TV industry has increasingly tried to cultivate a wagering advertising category.

Just the other day, Fox Corp. called out a partnership its Fox Sports unit entered into with Flutter Entertainment to develop “national media sports wagering,” and it also pointed out that it owns an equity stake in Flutter and maintains “valuable options to acquire approximately 18.5% of FanDuel Group,” which is a minority-owned subsidiary of Flutter.

That said, most telecasters are mainly interested in good old-fashioned advertising revenues to be had from the burgeoning digital sports-betting category, which is the main reason cited by Congressman Tonko for introducing his new bill.

Ironically, market forces may be moving in that direction anyway, according to some data I received from Standard Media Index (SMI) this week.

The SMI analysis wasn’t timed to the bill explicitly, but simply to the fact that wagering platforms/apps have become such big advertisers in the Super Bowl, but in recent years the category has actually been trending downward as an ad category.

“In 2021, gross ad spend for online betting soared, up 167% from 2020,” an SMI spokesperson noted, adding: “In 2022, however, the category’s ad spend didn’t just slow -- it decreased by nearly 10%.”

Interestingly, the SMI analysis also reveals exactly how dependent linear telecasters have become on the category, which allocates nearly 90% of its media mix on linear TV advertising (see data below).

What are the odds of that?