NBA, MLB using data to pursue better deals with sports betting



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BALTIMORE (AP) – For NBA and MLB leaders, a reduction in sports betting revenue is obvious. The bets would not even exist, they argue, without their teams playing games. They should therefore be paid and sports bets should be required to use their data to determine betting results.

The problem for the leagues has been to convince anyone in the world of sports betting.

They have been rejected by lawmakers from at least 10 states, both for payments and for the use of official statistics, which has weakened them in the context of private contracts with sports bets, beyond benefits of a vast marketing potential.

But giving casinos an overview of official data this season has given the MLB and the NBA confidence in trying to negotiate agreements in a timely manner. New argument: pay us in advance or give us a cut of what is put on our games, or lose our data feeds and the chance to place and settle bets in play at the speed of the sport .

The NBA has ended its data services for some sports betting during the playoffs, while interest in the professional hoops is at its highest level. The MLB could do the same later this season, hoping to get new deals with sports bets before the all-star break next month and isolate anyone else without an agreement.

Luckily or reluctantly, some sports bets register, less for the logos and more for the data, that they can use for a wide variety of live betting – a type of bet that should develop in the coming years with moving bets to smartphones and outside physical salons. In-game bets for baseball, for example, may include the team that has a lead after the sixth inning or the total number of points in the first five innings.

While neither the league nor several sports bets would discuss the financial details of the agreements with the Associated Press, the NBA pursues agreements that require sports betting to pay either a percentage of participation in the league, or a fixed amount.

"The fees we charge for this deposit of rights, and again, this is not just for the data, it is relative to the size of the company 's business. operator, "said Kenny Gersh, executive vice president of gaming and new business MLB. "We will not, therefore, attribute to a small operator the same treatment as a large operator."

The fees could be reworked, say the league officials paris sports, if payments become legally registered. Gersh said the MLB would offset the payments legally required by the royalties provided in the private agreements.

Fans can currently place bets in eight US states after the US Supreme Court ruled a year ago that states were free to legalize sports betting, ending Nevada's monopoly. Four other states and the District of Columbia have enacted sports betting laws but have not yet started taking bets.

The decision last May quickly gave way to leagues that were pursuing some of the action, with the gambling industry increasingly reluctant to thwart the leagues' effort to reduce all bets by 0.25%. laws.

Trade agreements have been more successful, linking data with rights to use recognizable logos and brands, advertising on league programs and sports betting without the generic touch seen for years in Las Vegas. Vegas, where sports betting often tries to convince players to bet on "Big Game", the Super Bowl.

FanDuel, a well-known name in fantasy sports competitions but a relatively new player in the sports betting market, was able to access official NBA data, brands and logos after becoming an "authorized gaming operator" of the league. Kip Levin, President and COO of FanDuel Group, said the data was a key factor in the partnership, citing over 50% of the shares the company has seen in New Jersey during this NBA season were bets in play.

"To do this correctly, it's really important that you have real-time statistics sources and data sources that are sort of input into your models and then help you to effectively encrypt all the odds involved," he said. Wine. "So working with the league, being able to access their official data feeds, just creates a better consumer end product."

Levin refused to provide the financial details of the agreement with the NBA.

The NBA has authorized its data distributors to provide access to all operators this season as it negotiated agreements, but ended the service to operators with whom it failed to reach an agreement. The MLB is using a similar strategy, hoping to reach contracts well before its playoffs in September and October.

"We have granted a season-long grace period to other betting operators to have access to official NBA data, while discussing partnership terms," ​​said Scott Kaufman-Ross, senior vice president of the NBA and responsible for fantasy and games. "As this period comes to a close – what distributors and operators have been experiencing since the beginning of the season – we remain committed to forging new partnerships for sports betting."

While trade deals are personalized for every bookmaker, some longtime operators disapprove of the leagues' approach and prefer to go out alone. Their point of view is that sports betting is already a low-margin activity, and that live betting revenue – the only version for which official near real-time data is really useful – is a tiny part of the national market. . Sports bets often set low limits on these bets or do not offer them at all, and the leagues demand a reduction of bets even for bets where their data make no material difference.

"We respect the leagues, we want to work with the leagues," said Jay Kornegay, vice president of sports betting and sports racing operations at Westgate Las Vegas. "There are marketing agreements to be made, and as far as revenue sharing is concerned, we simply do not have room for that … If we only pay one league, we are in the red. Paris. "

Longtime gamblers claim that sports betting in Nevada has been in business for four decades without having to rely on licensed league data. They also point out that data providers are aligning to seize the opportunities available to them in the marketplace.

"My database in my brain is just as, if not more, than the database that they can send," said Jimmy Vaccaro, who is now director of sports relations for Pittsburgh Rivers Casino after working at Las Vegas for decades. "People like me have been doing it since the beginning of their lives and it always comes down to pretty much the same, we have about the same percentage in terms of wisdom, we do not need help. What will they offer me? " We no longer need their database. "

Some oddsmakers believe that gambling could end or never flourish in some markets if the leagues continue to press.

The NBA and MLB have given various reasons for their intention to take advantage of the legal betting market. They argued that they should take steps to ensure that their games are not manipulated and have invested millions of dollars in the technology needed to track the data.

League officials also said the data was intellectual property. Courts, however, disagreed, saying that in previous cases, fantasy sports operators were not required to pay for the use of widely known statistics.

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