Sports-gambling sites have seeded the idea that betting is an organic, even essential, part of the show.Illustration by Spencer Flock
Darragh McGee is the author of the forthcoming book Imitation Games: How Gambling Hijacked Sports.
It’s that time of year again, a time when every sports book in North America is in full-throttle recruitment mode, each vying to inveigle their brand – and their products – in front of tens of millions of would-be bettors ahead of the single most lucrative payday of the year, the Super Bowl.
The 60th edition – featuring the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots at Levi Stadium, just outside San Francisco – is the latest fever-dream fusion of live sport and brand-curated gambling content. This is no longer remotely controversial, of course. Since the United States Supreme Court struck down a decades-old ban on sports betting in 2018, and after Canada flung open its gates three years later, gambling brands have planted their flag all over one of sport’s marquee events.
Less than a decade later, what they have achieved is nothing short of a cultural reset, simultaneously overturning a century’s worth of moral apathy while seeding the idea that gambling is an organic, even essential, part of the show.
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To that end, the Super Bowl might be seen as an explainer of sorts, a master class in the macabre genius of the gambling marketing playbook. As ever, the brand bombardment began weeks ago with wave after wave of irresistible inducements, from promo codes and free bets to welcome bonuses like “Bet $5, Get $300.” It is a marketing arms race that reflects the record revenues at stake. Pregame predictions forecast a record US$1.76-billion to be wagered legally with U.S. sports books alone, a 27-per-cent year-over-year increase.
The economics will scale more stratospheric still during the event’s much-hyped halftime show, where the going rate for a 30-second ad spot is forecast to break the US$10-million barrier this year. Look out for the sports-book giants here too, albeit styled in a more cinematic cut featuring celebrity cameos, including Kendall Jenner for Fanatics, playfully trolling her pro-athlete exes by riffing on the infamous “Kardashian Kurse.” Nothing screams of Super Bowl sports-book stunt quite like scenes of Ms. Jenner enjoying luxuries – a lavish pool, a vintage sports car, even a private jet – funded by bets ostensibly staked against her former basketball boyfriends. She exits with a line tailored for maximum viral reach: “Today, it’s time to bet on something new. Football players.”
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A word to the wise, however: Don’t be fooled by the lighthearted tones of the sports-book marketing machine. Humour, after all, is a form of currency which the industry is adept at weaponizing to their profitable ends. By the same token, few industries are better at humanizing the extractive, cutthroat mechanics of a business model that only profits when people lose. For reference, see the recasting of A-list celebrities and sporting royalty as “brand ambassadors,” from Wayne Gretzky, Tom Brady and Chris Rock at BetMGM; LeBron James, Kevin Hart and Tony Hawk at DraftKings; Drake, at Stake; and the Manning brothers, Peyton and Eli, at FanDuel. Collectively, they grant the industry what they crave most: cultural legitimacy, credibility and trust.
All this amounts to a cultural hijacking on a national scale, and yet Super Bowl LX is not even the sole focus of the sports-book recruitment drive this month. After all, "Legendary February," as its been dubbed by NBC Universal, is a month-long festival of premium-grade sport that also features the Milan Cortina Winter Games. In pure market terms, that’s another 16 different sports and 116 medal events added to the gambling industry “content” offering. And yet, it’s always more than a numbers game. Hearts and minds are also vulnerable to hijacking. That said, I probably don’t need to convince Canadians of the deeper-level allure of a quadrennially staged hockey tournament in which national identity and pride, not to mention international bragging rights, are also on the line. For a new generation of hard-core hockey fans naive to the addictive alchemy of the industry, the weeks ahead could prove to be a harmful learning curve.
Few industries are better at humanizing the extractive, cutthroat mechanics of a business model that only profits when people lose, writes Darragh McGee.Illustration by Spencer Flock
Be wary, too, of more cerebral, slow-paced sports like curling. In an age when prop bets prop up the profit margins of most gambling brands, the intermittent rhythms of once-shunned sports have been repackaged as ideal betting vehicles. If that sounds familiar, it isn’t altogether surprising. In the fall of 2023, the masterminds at Bet365 transported us to a parallel universe where "curling fever" becomes a mass cultural phenomenon. Picture scenes of a nation holding its breath, as a lone curler glides gently across the ice, releasing the final stone to win the championship. That’s the cue for national-level pandemonium in the stadium before spilling onto the streets, where fireworks crackle and crowds embrace in euphoric communion. Then comes the pitch featuring actor Aaron Paul: “Whatever the sport, whatever the moment, it’s never ordinary at Bet365.”
Not unique to any brand, this subtle insinuation that sport in its “ordinary” form suffers from a deficit of excitement or somehow lacks the requisite drama or beauty on its own terms, is an old marketing hack that will no doubt resurface in the year ahead. When it does, look out for the not-so-subtle sell of a bet as a benign fix or upgrade for every sporting occasion, be it amid low-scoring stalemates or watching your team on a losing streak.
If pressed for a moment when the recruitment drive of the industry will hit top gear, the smart money is on June, to coincide with the start of the FIFA World Cup, the first on North American soil since the legalization of sports betting laws. Forty-eight countries will play 104 matches at a peak rate of six per day, virtually every day, for 39 days. Consider, in turn, how each match will be carved up into hundreds of microevents, each of which will be offered as prop bets that exponentially accelerate the rate of real-time play, feedback and turnover. By design, that is a recipe for more impulsive game states and rapid casual spending, the kind that can inadvertently merge mornings and afternoons with evenings for days on end.
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What’s more, for the first time in history, FIFA have sold official betting data and betting streaming rights to a sports AI and data pioneer, Stats Perform, in a landmark agreement that means sports books across North America will show live streams for all 104 matches at the tournament. “We share FIFA’s vision to help the magic of the beautiful game be felt more deeply, by more fans, worldwide,” said Stats Perform CEO Carl Mergele, in a statement where the emphasis on the “deep” psychological impact on fandom could be read as an inadvertent foreshadowing of the human harms that have long been a byproduct of sport’s symbiotic relationship with gambling.
It feels apt that it coincided with an industry survey – conducted by digital payment platform, Paysafe, who sampled more than 3,800 respondents of legal gambling age across 13 markets – predicting an unprecedented upsurge of first-time and casual betting at the tournament. The findings don’t make for easy reading: 60 per cent of fans plan to stake bets online, including 19 per cent who will be new customers (the regional rates for Ontario were 46 per cent and 9 per cent).
The fact that FIFA will now be greasing the wheels of all this gambling sets a dangerous new precedent for sporting governance. It is yet another egregious example where public health has been casually sacrificed in pursuit of corporate profits and greed. Where it leaves us is a world where any remaining pretense of a firewall separating fans from gambling has all but been extinguished. Come the summer, gambling firms will effectively be gatekeepers to watching live coverage of the World Cup on a global scale.
All in, after Super Bowl LX and the Winter Olympics, 2026 is primed to be a milestone year for the sports books, granting them access to more public space than ever, generating higher revenues than ever, and moving us perilously close to a point when sport is reimagined as all-you-can-bet live casino experience. The stakes have never been higher.