Legal sports betting stands to generate an extra $4.2 billion a year for America’s four main professional sports leagues, according to a new study.
The study by Nielsen Sports allocates $2.3 billion of the windfall to the NFL, followed by $1.1 billion to MLB, $585 million to the NBA and $216 million to the NHL.
Nielsen, which surveyed 1,000 adult sports fans before making its projections, attributes $3.3 billion — or nearly 80 percent of the anticipated annual revenue increase — to what it calls “increased fan engagement.”
That’s additional revenue the leagues can expect from sponsorships, merchandise, ticket sales and, most of all, the sale of media rights — all indirect byproducts, Nielsen says, of increased consumer interest generated by legalized betting.
The study, commissioned by the American Gaming Association, a trade group for casinos, turned up figures that look comparable to the bonanza the casinos themselves are bracing for. In June, research firm Gambling Compliance estimated the legal sports betting industry will be worth between $3.1 billion and $5.2 billion in five years.
What the study did not address — yet remains a bone of contention between the gaming industry and the sports leagues — is how big of a cut each team deserves.
The debate centers on what MLB once presented as “integrity fees” but now calls “royalties.”
The leagues’ asking for such handouts — after years of resisting sports betting on grounds it would tarnish team reputations and foster game-fixing — rankles pro-betting advocates who, thanks to a Supreme Court decision in May, finally made it happen.
At last week’s Global Gaming Expo panel in Las Vegas, Sara Slane, the AGA’s senior vice president of public affairs, railed in a panel discussion against MLB Executive Vice President Kenny Gersh for belatedly inviting himself to a party his league and others had blocked for years.
“[Now] you want a cut of the revenue without any of the risk,” she said.
Gersh countered that the leagues provide the games that permit sports betting to flourish.
“If the Yankees weren’t playing the Red Sox last night, the casinos don’t have that game to offer bets on,” he said.
Gersh was conciliatory on one front, however. The 1 percent integrity fee MLB originally demanded from the gaming industry for sports-betting wagers has since been reduced to a 0.25 percent royalty.
The study reinforces how little will be required from the leagues to collect the extra billions. In interviews, AGA officials sought to make league officials look petty in the face of major windfalls.
“They’re tripping over dollars to pick up pennies,” Slane told The Post on Thursday.
The remaining $900 million in extra revenue identified in the study will come directly from the gaming operators themselves, Nielsen says, in the form of increased advertising during league games, sponsorships for gambling services and payments for league data.
But the measurement company admits the revenue boosts won’t happen overnight.
Its forecast is based on legal sports betting growing into a national market that gives 100 million US adults access to the activity.
Also, for the leagues to receive bumped-up media payments, they must wait for their current TV deals to expire. That won’t happen until 2020 for MLB, 2022 for the NFL and the NHL, and 2025 for the NBA.