Buffalo Bills Caesars Deal – How other states could follow trend
Iconic casino chain Caesars struck a big blow in the battle for sports betting by becoming an official partner of the Buffalo Bills. The football team announced that it will enter a multi-year deal with Caesars to offer exclusive fan experiences for users of Caesars’ sportsbook betting app. The most noteworthy perk will be Caesars having rights to offer a premium club lounge in the Bills’ Highmark Stadium for VIP users of the app.
The deal is a testament to both the rising popularity of sports betting and the importance of New York in the gambling industry. The state recently enacted a measure to allow legal sports betting to happen outside of casinos. Experts in the gambling industry marked NY as a huge potential market due to its size, especially when one considers NYC and its millions of residents. Companies like Caesars smartly jumped on the chance to get in on the ground floor of NY’s sports betting scene by establishing deals like the Bills partnership. BetMGM made a similar deal with Madison Square Garden when it obtained its betting license in NY.
That’s not to say that NY is the only fruitful market. Other states have collected great revenue from sports betting, even if they lack the sheer population of NYC. The past few years are signaling the rise of sports betting as an industry. The push is coming from the many states that have passed betting laws that legalized sports betting through apps. This online release has allowed more and more populations to take part in online casino games, participate in online poker, and toss in on sports betting. What used to happen only in casinos or small cash-only friend groups is now a nation-spanning online business.
Revenue data from the states shows numbers in the millions every month, even outside of popular betting times like football season. This isn’t just from the big boys line NYC or Vegas either. States like Michigan and Pennsylvania have turned out to have massive sports betting populations.
The Michigan sports betting scene, in particular, is huge. The football fandom there is very active in betting. They’ve been so great that Michigan often rivals longtime gambling giants like New Jersey for monthly sports betting revenue.
As a result, we’re already seeing betting companies showing interest in Michigan. There are plans to install betting stations in key Detroit stadiums with haste to take advantage of the state’s eager bettors. The next logical step seems to be a special VIP lounge similar to what the Bills have with Caesars. If Michigan keeps posting great betting numbers even after the Super Bowl, there’s a big chance that some partnership talks could happen. Popular teams in large states also seem prime for partnership deals–think Texas or California once that state passes its betting laws. New England teams also have large followings, and a stadium partnership with a sports betting brand could draw users from the several states that follow the Patriots and Red Sox.
The wave started with the 2018 overturning of PAPSA from the Supreme Court. PAPSA was a 1992 law that forbade sports betting outside of Las Vegas and New Jersey. The Supreme Court’s repeal of PAPSA made it so any state could legalize sports betting, thus allowing individual states to make their own gambling laws. What followed was many states enacting online gambling and sports betting measures that finally went into effect over the last two years. Sports betting is still a young industry at its current scale, but the profit potential is apparent. The Bills-Caesars partnership is sure to be the first of many similar deals.
