At a time when the NFL is making plenty of money from legalized gambling (especially with owners permitted to hold up to five percent of companies that operate sports books), NCAA institutions have seen their revenue potential plummet.
As explained by Amanda Christovich of FrontOfficeSports.com, the cash-needy college programs won’t be able to feather the nest with sports book dollars.
Not many schools had gotten on board the gravy train gone bust. UNLV and Nevada-Reno became the first schools to rake in cash, in the nation’s traditional gambling haven. Colorado followed suit, as did the likes of Michigan State and LSU.
The relationships were problematic. A backlash came from the fact that the schools were marketing gambling to university communities consisting of plenty of people who were too young to bet.
Last year, the American Gaming Association prohibited its members from sponsorship deals with NCAA programs, while also blocking NIL deals with college athletes.
Meanwhile, the NCAA continues to push for a nationwide ban on prop bets for college sports.
“We have taken a hard line against prop betting on college sports,” NCAA president Charlie Baker said recently at a conference in (irony) Las Vegas. “Too many student athletes are being harassed by bettors.”
It’s a real dynamic. MLB players are experiencing it. Surely, all players in all sports that offer wagers based on individual performance risk enduring threats — and maybe worse.
Prop bets also present the biggest risk of wrongdoing by individual players, who can engineer their own unders by embellishing or flat-out faking an injury. (That’s what got Jontay Porter banned for life by the NBA.)
So it makes sense for sports books and institutions that are moving away from providing only tuition, room, board, fees, and books to disassociate. Still, given the fact that college programs will soon be digging deeper than ever to settle antitrust lawsuits and pay players, it has to sting to not be able to grab such an easy bag of cash.
And it leaves the sports books with more marketing dollars for sports (like the NFL) that continue to willingly pull dollars out of the air with one hand, while wagging a finger at its players, coaches, and other employees with the other.