Official betting has emerged as a primary front in the fight over how states and the federal government should regulate sports gambling. It reflects the growing ambition of US leagues to shape state and national policy through their control of data, a strategy that has supplanted integrity fees as their preferred means of monetizing betting-related revenues.
In the first year since the US Supreme Court threw open the door to legal sports betting, the NFL and other leagues have made it clear they want to be judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to state-by-state regulation. In that context, the fight over official betting has become an important test of whether the leagues can persuade regulators to require their official data for all wagers on their events.
The debate over official data is also an early litmus test for how willing college and professional athletes’ unions will be to allow their players to be compelled to share personal information with the companies that pay for it. The unions are likely to face a fierce backlash from fans and media if they consent to a scenario in which their data is sold for the purposes of grading bet tickets.
In order to be considered commercially reasonable, the price of official data needs to be significantly lower than the cost of unofficial data. Sources within the industry say that the initial terms set by the leagues via data distributor Sportradar are far from competitive. Moreover, requiring operators to use official data artificially constrains the marketplace and reduces operator flexibility.