U.S. sports teams seeking sponsorship deals

The sports leagues may have bitterly opposed New Jersey’s ultimately successful attempt to achieve the liberalisation of sports betting in the United States, but they’re certainly interested now in doing deals with betting operators, says Joe Asher, chief executive of the US division of William Hill plc.

In a Reuters interview Asher claimed that U.S. sports teams are clamouring for sponsorship deals as legal sports betting starts to take off in the United States following the strike down of the restrictive Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act by the US Supreme Court last month.

New Jersey’s expensive fight against the PASPA will be vindicated today (Thursday) when the state governor Phil Murphy places the first New Jersey sports bet.

William Hill is in on the ground floor of the new betting sector in the state, having invested in a deal back in 2013 to build out a sports book at Monmouth Park Racetrack, where the first bets will be placed.

Asher told the news agency that despite tension between bookmakers, casinos, state regulators and the leagues over revenue and data sharing, “the leagues and the teams are interested in doing commercial deals.”

He revealed that the CEO of “one of the most prominent franchises in the country” discussed the idea with Asher in Las Vegas even before the Supreme Court’s ruling, Asher said, though he would not name the team or the sport.

Related and similar