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Assessment Of The Relationship Between Sports Betting And Viewership Of English Premiership League (epl)
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
The
history of sports on television can be traced back to an informal
scrimmage between members of the Philadelphia Eagles in 1934, which was
used to demonstrate the world’s first electronic television system. Five
years later, the first professional football game between the
Philadelphia Eagles and Brooklyn Dodgers was broadcast to about 1,000
television sets (Cressman & Swenson, 2007). As television became
more popular in the 1950s, the National Football League (NFL) quickly
realized the opportunity for revenue and began selling broadcasting
rights to a television network called DuMont. It was CBS however, that
broadcasted the first full EPL (English Premier League) season in 1992
(Cressman & Swenson, 2007). The industry has since grown such that
sports fans now have 24-hr access to sports entertainment through a wide
variety of media outlets, where television now faces substantial
competition from Internet Web sites.
Television broadcasts have long
been the primary source of sports entertainment short of attending the
events in person. For example, the average viewership of NFL regular
season games on ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX has increased from 15.8 million
in 2002 to 16.6 million in 2008 according to the NFL and Nielsen Media
Research. More specific to primetime Sunday night football on NBC, the
2008 Nielsen ratings reveal that the number of viewers ranged from
approximately 11 million to 23 million per game. In 2008, mega events
such as the Super Bowl and the Olympics attracted over 90 and 30 million
viewers respectively at different points during their broadcasts.
Furthermore, FOX Saturday Baseball attracted an average of 3.8 million
viewers each Saturday in the 2007 season.
In the UK, the social
practice of betting has been subject to varying degrees of legislative
control, reaching what some have seen as a ‘high water mark’ in 1906.
From the 1906 Street Betting Act to the 1960 Betting and Gaming Act,
betting was essentially an underground activity and one subject to
significant (if evadable) punishment. The 1960 legislation set a new
direction that saw greater toleration of betting in Britain, and
introduced high street betting shops. Between 1960 and the advent of the
National Lottery Act in 1993, betting largely operated on the principle
of ‘unstimulated demand’. However, in 2005, the New Labour
administration swept this paternalism away, via the 2005 Betting Act,
which significantly liberalized betting laws, endorsed (through
regulation) online betting and permitted betting companies to run
television adverts. In an era of globalization, these policy shifts in
the UK have broader consequences than those traditionally associated
with the territorially bound governance of states, and have contributed
to the ‘convergence of a global passion for sport and a global passion
for betting’. This convergence has received insufficient attention in
the public health literature, especially in the UK, and is particularly
visible in football contexts.
Amongst the most visible partnerships
that betting companies have entered into in the UK since the 2005 Act,
have been with clubs in the English Premier League (EPL). The EPL is an
important export for the UK economy with broadcasters paying
subscriptions to the EPL for the right to show matches and highlights
across 225 territories. The EPL claims that during the 2013/2014 season,
2.3 billion fans were engaged in the competition for the full 10 months
of its duration and in the 2014/2015 season, that it reached an
audience of 3 billion in-home viewers. The current television deal saw
Sky Sports and BT Sport pay £5.136 billion for broadcast rights between
2016 and 2019. It is clear, therefore, that the EPL can be a significant
global marketing vehicle for any industry, whether through shirt
sponsorship, advertising hoardings, league sponsorship or stadium
sponsorship. In recent years, the betting industry has made use of this
marketing vehicle through a range of sponsorship deals with EPL clubs.
The industry has also made significant inroads within the wider English
Football League, with one betting company sponsoring the second, third
and fourth-tier leagues in England. In an effort to keep up with the
competition, television networks such as CBS and ESPN have also
responded to the seemingly endless desire for up-to-date player
information by incorporating “betting updates†into their TV sports news
coverage. A survey conducted by the FSTA appears to have helped justify
these network’s actions revealing that “55 percent of those surveyed
say that they watch more sports on television because of their
involvement in sports betting leagues,†suggesting that sports betting
and television broadcasts are complements (Prescott, 2006)
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]This study assesses the relationship between sports betting and viewership of English Premiership. This study adopted the descriptive survey research design. The study population constituted respondents in bet9ja outlets in Port-Harcourt, Rivers State. In this study, the researcher randomly selected 456 participant from bet9ja outlets in the city. This study made use of questionnaire as the main research instrument. The method of data analysis was a combination of descriptive and inferential sta ... Continue reading---
