Machine Zone

Sports media and the larger sports landscape are both perpetually evolving. The first form of sports media was newspapers. They could publish on a daily basis which was perfect for keeping up with the MLB regular season. As radio and then television took over, the dominant sport shifted away from baseball towards football and basketball. In any case, the leagues followed the money.

The latest monumental shift in the world of sports is the death of cable TV. Media giant ESPN was in 100 million American households in 2013. In 2022, that number was down to 71m and is expected to dip below 50 million by 2027. Why? People got tired of paying for channels they don’t watch. As customers have shifted their spending habits away from cable, the media has adjusted accordingly and invested in streaming. 

The future of sports will follow the money again, and the next biggest influence on the industry is gambling. It’s still in its infancy as more states continue to legalize it, but there’s no doubt that all We We We of the different stakeholders in the sports industry view it as one of the central pieces to the future of sports. The biggest leagues and broadcasters are making huge money on gambling sponsorships, and the numbers are only increasing. Even professional sports gamblers don’t like how far things are going.

“There’s a very negative element to gambling that’s not discussed enough, which is: 98% of the people betting on sports are going to lose money,” said professional gambler Amal Shah. “I think that’s something that needs to be discussed… instead of trying to part people from their money.”

For many years, sports betting was strictly an under-the-table industry. Concerns about its addictive nature and its threat to the integrity of professional and collegiate sports prevented it from being legalized. However, that eventually changed. 

There was far too much money available for sports leagues. Despite appearing before the Supreme Court to argue that sports betting would undermine the integrity of their leagues, behind the scenes they worked alongside betting giants FanDuel and DraftKings to partner in the legalization of sports betting. In 2018, it was.

The experience of watching sports would never be the same. 

Over the next few years, sports fans were inundated with all forms of gambling advertisements. They dominate TV commercials, and appear all over social media, in podcasts, and on YouTube. 

The biggest area of spending, TV advertising, reached a peak of nearly $900 million in spending in 2021, per American Gaming Association. The main purpose of the spending has been legal books trying to claim market share in states that have newly legalized sports betting. 

Because gambling is addictive, most of the sportsbooks’ work is done once a bettor is using their app. This effect is reflected by the TV advertising spending of gambling companies trending downward since 2021 while the revenue continues to skyrocket, according to Legal Sports Report. 

The advertising efforts come in several forms. Some are traditional ads, like Jamie Foxx’s with MGM:

However, the more creative ones are placed directly into a broadcast. The NBA’s most recognizable group of analysts, the Inside the NBA Crew, have a regular segment where Charles Barkley makes a parlay before a game starts.

Here he is celebrating his first win of the season during a TNT postgame show:

Not only is the marketing unavoidable, but the betting services themselves are more accessible than ever before.

“The average person’s sitting there on their phone, and they’re like, oh, let me sign up for this. All you need is your driver’s license and a credit card, takes you about five minutes and you can do it. Next thing you know you’re an action and I think, you know, look, in theory it’s meant to be entertaining, but the reality is it just doesn’t turn out that way,” he said.

This accessibility has resulted in American sports fans picking up sports betting habits in droves. A 2024 survey by Siena College and St. Bonaventure University found that 39% of Americans bet on sports.

The survey also found that 91% of those bettors have betting apps on their phones. As Shah said this easy access leads to the compulsive gambling that most casual bettors practice. It usually starts off as seemingly innocent fun.

The bettors have said they thoroughly enjoy sports gambling. The same survey found that 93% of sports gamblers find it fun and exciting, and 85% believe it makes them more interested in watching the games. 

Above all else, Shah says, this is why the leagues find sports gambling so valuable. 

“It’s changed the way that people view sports. It’s also kept interest in games and sports where [they] wouldn’t have much interest,” he said.

In a highly competitive attention economy, sports teams and leagues need every edge they can get, and as Shah said, when teams have low expectations or have already been eliminated from the postseason, it’s easy to see attendance and TV numbers dip. 

The leagues have embraced the potential for sports betting to combat that loss of interest and keep fans engaged regardless of the status of a team and their playoff or title chances.

The same goes for individual games. Single-game TV ratings are typically entirely dependent on how exciting and close the game is. However, when people bet on individual player props, they may still have something at stake in the game even if it’s a blowout.

So despite the dangers that may come with promoting sports betting, an asset that fundamentally makes their product more entertaining is far too valuable for leagues not to continue to support. 

Of course, the leagues embracing gambling is mutually beneficial for them and the betting companies. It gives them the chance to use ads during broadcasts or inside of the stadium to keep betting at the top of mind for viewers.

With that being said, the ultimate goal for gambling companies is not to need ads to get people’s attention in the first place. Las Vegas, America’s gambling capital, benefits from repeat customers that chase the unique feeling that only gambling can provide. 

Gambling, including sports betting, has been legal for the past century in Nevada, which has allowed for Las Vegas’ casinos to develop the most effective strategies to maximize the amount of money their patrons spend. 

In her book Addiction by Design, Natasha D. Schüll explains the concept of the “machine zone,” a feeling that gamblers experience where their entire consciousness and all of their senses are focused on winning their game of slots. 

The casinos design every aspect of their machines with that zone in mind. By taking advantage of the phenomenon, the have been able to optimize slot machines. Once an afterthought meant to entertain the wives of gamblers waiting for their husbands to finish, they have turned into the casinos’ most profitable game.

Currently, sports betting companies can’t apply the same concept that Schüll explains because betting is done on a mobile device that doesn’t capture a patron’s attention in the same way slot machines do. However, that could all change soon. 

Virtual reality has a chance to revolutionize the way sports fans watch television. 

The most recent trend in live sports has been the shift away from traditional cable television packages towards streaming platforms. It’s forced media companies to change their strategies and offer more personalized options to consumers who had been paying for cable specifically to watch their programming. 

As more movies and television shows became available on streaming services, television watchers grew tired of paying for comprehensive packages and began to opt for the more customizable experience of paying only for the streaming services they wanted. 

This shift coincides with the progression to consuming content on different devices. Full-sized TVs were the only option in the past, but now many Americans watch their television on phones, tablets, and laptops.

Households that exclusively watch television on mobile devices increased by a million in 2024, up to six percent, according to Informitv. 

Although the shift is slow and gradual, the Advertising Research Foundation found that households without TVs are more than twice as common among young adults aged 18-34, indicating the younger generation’s increased comfort with non-traditional television. 

In sports, the next iteration to be popularized for watching live games could be virtual reality. A variety of challenges like price, comfort with the technology, and the lack of an existing community currently prevent VR from its potential popularity. However, if it is able to remedy those shortcomings, VR has the potential to revolutionize live sports consumption. 

Currently, there are two main ways to watch sports through VR. One is through VR-specific programs like Xtadium, a service that simulates the in-stadium experience.

It allows fans at home to watch a game from the perspective of someone sitting on the sidelines of the court or field. Users turn their heads to follow the play while having all the sights and sounds they would hear from their seats at the game played directly into their eyes and ears. This experience is unique to VR and not replicable on a television. In exchange, it offers a more limited selection.

“It’s specific games they have the technology for. So it’s not all the games,” Garcia said.

The other option is to watch a regular broadcast through the VR headset. The experience is a lot more similar to streaming on a smart TV or mobile device. However, the user has more options for watching multiple games and keeping up with stats simultaneously. 

Therein lies the potential gambling connection. Gambling is currently mostly done on the phone.  While it is easy to pull out a phone while watching a game on another device or go into picture-in-picture mode to open a betting app while watching from the phone, no experience compares to the potential ease of gambling from a VR headset. 

The feeling of total immersion in the experience mirrors exactly what casinos strive to create with their slot machines. 

Because both gambling companies and VR companies share that common goal, VR could be uniquely valuable for gambling companies if it were to become a more mainstream way to watch games. If the sports betting apps were fully integrated into VR systems, the sportsbooks would be able to leverage the same ‘machine zone’ that Vegas casinos covet. 

Sports fans switching to VR in droves and preferring it over traditional TV or streaming would be a dream for sports books. Sports fans would be able to watch multiple games they were actively betting on while tracking the stats in a box score window right next to the broadcast. They could even add new live bets as they watched without missing a second of any game.

Regarding the potential integration, Somerville said: “I’m sure it’ll happen at some point. How it happens? I’m unsure.”

As VR technology continues to improve and sports betting continues to progress, the line between watching and experiencing live sports will continue to disappear. 

For VR, the next big step is lowering the price of the product. Both Garcia and Somerville cited exorbitant price tags as the main obstacle preventing VR from taking its place as a mainstream method for watching live sports. 

Somerville mentioned the aesthetics of VR as another roadblock on VR’s path, but both agreed that with lower prices and increased social acceptance, VR could become a primary medium for watching sports in the future.