— This is the script of CNBC's news report for China's CCTV on May 16, 2018, Wednesday.
Previously, some areas of the United States that legalized gambling, including sports betting, take the gambling as an important source of tax. For example, the market scale of gambling in state of Nevada reached $4.8 billion last year and its total number in black market is estimated to be several times that of the legalized sports betting market. The American Gaming Association estimates the black market trades at least $150 billion on illegal sports-betting annually in US. And it's nearly enough to buy every franchise in the NFL, NBA, and MLB; thus, from the perspective of market, the legalization of sports betting that is sanctioned by the US Supreme Court will definitely improve the tax income and boost economy.
Meanwhile, the supporters of sports betting believe that this decision offers a new form of entertainment to sports fans and it will change the Sports consumption patterns, even contribute to traditional TV's ratings and make the competition more interesting. For instance, Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks owner and billionaire investors, said in the CNBC interview that this decision could double the value of the top four professional sports teams.
For markets, the stocks of several US casino companies increased after the news was announced. We can see that the stock price of these gaming companies includes Scientific Games Corp, Caesars Entertainment Corporation and Churchill Downs rise significantly in this week.
Some companies that have gaming business have already prepared to enter the sports betting market, just waited for the sanction. For example, the CEO of MOM told CNBC that they have already build the architecture for sports betting.
[Jim Murren, CEO, MGM] "We have already established the architecture to deploy sports betting as soon as states allow ius to do that. I would think our decades of relationships with the league, with the teams in nevada, that we will be a sig player if not largest player in the market."
We also mentioned just now that the market anticipates this sanction may spur the media companies do more investment on sports league. On the one hand, from the betting in competition to the improvement of advertising effect, higher ratings will increase the bargaining power of traditional media in broadcasting sports events. However, a contradictory point is that we are not sure whether the media companies are willing to enter the sports betting market or not. We know that the sports channel ESPN that under Disney tried investing Draft King, a sports game related to betting, but Disney finally gave up this plan because Disney wanted to protect its brand reputation from gambling. Additionally, many people also against this sanction, some US sports institutions declared position expressing their opposition, they think the gambling will threaten the credibility of sports competition and distract people's attention on sports competition.