How Canadian gambling expansion could alter the sports viewership landscape.
Gambling has long been a popular pastime among Canadians. For decades, we’ve had access to everything from lottery tickets and scratchies, to casino slots and tables, to poker games and sports picks. Canada has always been one of the more lenient nations of the western hemisphere, at least when it comes to gambling laws. However, some of those laws – particularly the one that permits betting on sports – are limited in nature. To loosen up restrictions on legal betting in Canada, as the government seems poised to do, is likely to create a parallel universe, so to speak, for sports fans.
What’s Happening, and Why…
For the last few decades, Canadians have been able to place parlay bets on sports. A parlay is a type of wager that requires at least two or three picks to be made. If all those picks are correct, the bettor wins a fine sum of money. If any pick is wrong, the whole bet is lost. While punters have always longed for the option to place a straight bet on a single event, it was at least comforting to know we had some legal betting options (unlike most of our neighbors to the south).
Then, in May of 2018, the US government repealed PASPA, the federal law that prohibited Americans from sports gambling (outside Nevada). That move gave all US states the option to legalize any and all forms of sports wagering. For Canada, it was the final straw, spurring our government to consider expanding its gambling laws to include single-event betting.
It’s not a new effort, mind you. Multiple attempts have been made to do just that in the last ten years; each and every one met with ultimate demise. But this time, things could be different. This revitalized legislative action is considered by many to be poised for success. I don’t mean immediate success. When has the Canadian government ever been known to do anything quickly? Rather, in a slow, steady, responsibly contemplative manner, we just may get the single-event sports gambling expansion so many of us have long yearned for.
But at what cost…?
Canadian Gambling Expansion to Alter Sports Viewership Landscape
The question is not whether it will happen – because it almost certainly will. The real question is how a liberal betting landscape will impact the way Canadians experience sports. Taking our southerly neighbors as an example, we can learn, estimate, and infer that some things are going to change, especially where sports viewership is concerned. In the US, it’s already creating a parallel universe, of sorts. Let me explain…
Last Wednesday, the Philadelphia 76ers took on the Brooklyn Nets in an exciting, high-scoring NBA match-up that saw the 76ers triumph, 123 – 117. Coverage of the game was aired on America’s number one sports network, ESPN. But viewers were given a choice of two, separate broadcasts. One was a traditional airing of the game. The other was a betting-oriented broadcast, teeming with gambling-specific content.
The hosts of this second broadcast didn’t just analyze the game, but all of the available bets that could be placed on it; from pre-game bets and odds, to the multitude of live in-play bets that could be placed as the action was unfolding.
This is most definitely the fate awaiting sports fans here in Canada. Already, TSN and Sportsnet have debuted gambling-oriented content on their platforms. I’ve no doubt we’re in for a similar dual-casting of sporting events, if and when Canada’s expansion of legal gambling comes to fruition.
