New NFL CBA Allows Players Share Of Sportsbook Revenue

• The New NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement has been announced by the NFL and the NFLPA.
• The new CBA allows sports betting in NFL stadiums, and runs through the year 2030.
• The sports betting revenue from stadiums is set to enter the shared revenue pool, meaning in effect that players would get a portion of it.

NEW YORK – There has been much discussion of the NFL’s recent collective bargaining agreement struck with the NFL Player’s Association, the union that represents NFL Players.

The NFL showed significant opposition to sports betting in the past, but the new CBA allows for sports betting lounges within stadiums, and calls for revenue sharing with the players.

Stadium sports betting has long been the dream of many NFL sports bettors – the ability to place a bet while watching the game live, in an officially sanctioned manner is something like the sports betting community’s white whale.

The CBA, of course, is not meant to reflect the reality on the ground right now. It is meant to provide a roadmap for all of the changes that could occur in the next decade, and as such, is a broad document.

NFL VP of Communications Bryan McCarthy told ESPN:

“This is forward-looking language that addresses revenue sharing from activities in the event they take place in the future, there’s no certainty or timeline as to when these activities would be implemented.”

What that means is that while this is a serious positive step towards catching sports betting’s white whale, this is no guarantee that it actually will happen within the time limit of this CBA.

The fundamental truth of the situation is that the NFL owners like to make money, and if sports betting is legal, then they will want to integrate that moneymaking capability into their own operations.

The players, meanwhile, also want to make money – the more money that enters the revenue sharing pool, the larger the pool of money player contracts can draw from.

Sports betting, then, seems to serve a similar role for NFL owners as running a lottery does for any of the states in the United States: it provides an influx of revenue that can then be applied to whatever you’d like to use it for.

This makes it something of a no brainer for an organization like the NFL, which does not even have to wrestle with the ethical case for allowing legal sports betting, the way a state funded organization would have to do.

The white whale of sports betting appears to be within reach – NFL stadiums could be sports betting Mecca’s in short order.

It only seems to be a matter of time.

News tags: Bryan McCarthy | CBA | football | NFL | NFL CBA | NFLPA