Remember six years ago, when sports broadcasts were absolutely inundated with ads for daily fantasy sports? I think every NFL fan remembers, for as much as we may try to forget.
Thankfully, the incredible backlash to those ads (and their frequency) resulted in a substantial dropoff, and they eventually just became part of the overall advertising (and sponsored content) landscape as opposed to the monolith towering over all.
And while it doesn’t seem like we’re going to return to that bad place any time soon, the NFL has opened the door for more traditional sports betting ads during game broadcasts.
According to the Sports Business Journal, networks will be allowed to sell six ad spots per game to sportsbooks. That’s one ad in each quarter, one during pregame coverage, and one during halftime. The only sportsbooks that will be allowed to purchase ads are the three official sponsors (Caesars, DraftKings, FanDuel) and the four “approved operators” (BetMGM, FoxBet, PointsBet, and WynnBet).
Six spots per game doesn’t seem like a lot, until you realize that it means 18 spots across a full Sunday of games, or roughly one per 30 or 40 minutes. Given that these will all be national spots, I’m sure they’ll seem quite grating, especially in states without legalized sports betting at the moment. On the bright side, it’s nowhere near the amount of ads we saw for daily fantasy in 2015, when DraftKings was airing an ad every 90 seconds.
And while six spots per game does seem like a lot, NBA games this season were reportedly seeing double that amount on RSNs. That seems like overkill, and if the NFL eventually expands to that point of ad saturation, maybe then we’ll get to point of frustration we saw during the daily fantasy overload.
