BOSTON – The overwhelming presence of executives and attorneys from the major sports leagues has so far dominated ICE North America.
The conference has included hometown executives from the Boston Celtics and Boston Red Sox, as well as Jonathan Kraft, president of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots. Wes Edens, co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, which is playing for the NBA Eastern Conference Finals, was in attendance.
Officials from the WNBA, PGA Tour, NASCAR and the Chicago Cubs are also participating.
William Hill US CEO Joe Asher acknowledged Tuesday how much the sports betting landscape has changed along with the leagues acceptance.
David Miller, PGA Tour
A year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on single-game sports wagering and paved the way for states to legalize the activity, sports leagues and teams have been receptive to sports gaming. However, some entities still want to be paid a royalty. Others want compensation for use of their data in grading wagers.
David Miller, vice president and assistant general counsel with the PGA Tour, gave credit to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver for paving a path for sports leagues to get behind wagering years before the court’s ruling.
“Commissioner Silver (started) changing the mindset of the sports leagues and opened our eyes years ago when he penned that op-ed in the New York Times,” Miller said. “It was almost five years ago when I started at the PGA Tour. At that time, the view was that gambling was bad and stay as far away from it as you can. It’s completely prohibited in every way. That is how all the leagues felt about it until Commissioner Silver.”
At the PGA Tour, Miller said the landscape changed in 2016 and 2017 after Jay Monahan assumed the role as commissioner, Miller said.
“He’s from Boston and a Boston sports fanatic, and Jay had a different mindset,” Miller said. “He felt like it was a way for golf and the PGA Tour to generate more interest in the sport. Betting is ingrained in the sport of golf. The pace of golf is conducive to betting because there are so many different shots. It’s mind for in-play. We have about 32,000 shots per event.”
It’s about how they generate more interest in golf for fans ages 21 to 34, Miller said, adding the PGA Tour’s technology that tracks shots wasn’t instituted for betting purposes. But will be available for that use.
“All this rich data is being compiled from every single shot on the PGA Tour and going out around the world and one of those will now be betting,” Miller said. “We have been upgrading our system to make sure we can serve the in-play betting market and provide a unique opportunity in the industry.”
IMG Arena is building the first live shot-by-shot betting platform that will be plugged into sports books. The user will follow along the live action with a leaderboard to bet on every shot and visualization to see the lay out of the hole, Miller said.
“You will have this fully immersive live betting product starting next year in the first quarter,” Miller. “The plan is for it to launch outside of the U.S. We’re still determining in the U.S. when and where and how to launch. It is a product that can easily be debuted here in the U.S. We’re really excited about it. The data has never been there for golf. Operators have never had access to fast and reliable data feeds because we’ve never supplied it.”
