*By Michael Teich*
The NBA is continuing its push into the sports betting market. On Friday, the league announced on Cheddar that it inked a deal with UK-based Bet365, bringing its total partnerships with sports betting operators to five.
"Their brand is huge internationally," Kaufman-Ross told Cheddar. "They're one of the biggest players throughout Europe and other parts of the world."
The deal with Bet365 follows the same framework as its previous deals with MGM, FanDuel, FOX Bet, and William Hill. Each of these operators has the right to use official NBA data, utilize marks and logos to create a more authentic product, and will be promoted from NBA.com.
The NBA has been quick to embrace legalized sports betting after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal ban in May 2018. It became the first major U.S. sports league to partner with a sportsbook operator after signing a deal with MGM in July 2018. The NBA monetizes these partnerships in a number of ways.
"In some of our deals, yes we get a royalty on the betting volume," Kaufman-Ross said. "In others, it's more like a flat fee, or a per state fee."
Currently, thirteen states have up-and-running legalized sports betting. Only four of those have true mobile betting. Five more states, plus Washington, D.C., have approved the practice, but sports betting in those regions is not yet operational. The U.S. has handled a total of $12.4 billion in sports bets since June of last year, and the legalization by more states will fuel growth even more, said Kaufman-Ross.
"There's a lot of growth that we think is going to come when new states come online and new states pass mobile betting. And I think what'll be really interesting is that what we've seen thus far, is once a state does pass a law with true mobile betting, it happens very quickly."
Barstool Sports CEO Erika Nardini joined Cheddar's Kristen Scholer to discuss plans for the future even as COVID-19 upended Barstool's sponsorship of the Arizona Bowl featuring the Boise State Broncos and the Central Michigan Chippewas due to the spreading omicron variant. "In our case as a company, coronavirus has been a big boom for us," she noted. "We've been able to create a lot of new programming, launch a lot of different personalities, and frankly take share from traditional media, and that's what we've done the entire pandemic." While she admitted to taking a hit on the canceled Bowl game, live events aren't completely off the table for Barstool in 2022. Nardini also talked about potential sports betting expansion following its partnership with Penn National Gaming.
Five women have been named to the U.S. short-track speedskating team for the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Among those five, there was only one returning Olympian of the group, Maame Biney, who competed in the 2018 Olympics as the first African-American woman to ever qualify for the U.S. short-track speedskating team. JD sat down with Biney to discuss how she's preparing for the games.
Eric Mitchell, Sports Analyst and President & CEO of LifeFlip Media, breaks down the updated rules around testing in the NFL and outlines how vaccinated players are impacted by new return-to-play guidelines.
Carlo and Baker kick off the weirdest week of the year with all the news you missed over the holiday weekend, including calls for the CDC to shorten its isolation window as Omicron sweeps through the country.
The 2022 Winter Olympics will be without some of hockey's biggest players. The NHL and the NHL Player's Association have agreed to not participate in the men's hockey tournament at the Games in Beijing next year. The league has been forced to postpone some games because of a rise in COVID-19 cases among players. Washington Post sports reporter Samantha Pell joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss what this could mean for the Winter Olympics and the sport of hockey.
Former professional tennis player Patrick McEnroe joined Cheddar to discuss the troubling issues surrounding player Peng Shuai who appeared potentially to have been silenced following her social media post accusing former Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault. Shuai's subsequent disappearance, reappearance, and apparent retraction of the accusation in an interview only added to worries. "When this happened, all of us in the tennis community were very concerned. And, by the way, another thing Peng said in this interview was that she doesn't speak very good English," McEnroe noted. "Well I can assure you, she speaks darn good English, 'cause I spoke to her on many occasions over the last 15 years."
Carlo and Baker cover the heartening news on the Covid front ahead of the holiday, plus President Biden punting student loan repayments again, a new space telescope and Love, Hate, Ate: Christmas Eve Eve Edition!
The boys discuss President Biden's plans to send out free rapid tests as the testing supply chain starts to buckle ahead of the holidays. Also, why aren't Americans having more babies, and The Matrix returns.
