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Assessment Of The Relationship Between Sports Betting And Viewership Of English Premiership League (epl)
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1.2 Statement of the problem
Betting
on sports is a rapidly growing market with worldwide turnover of 58
billion euros in 2015 as estimated by the European Gaming and Betting
Association. This value exceeds the gross domestic product of countries
like Panama or Costa Rica, and these official numbers ignore that
substantial illegal betting is not covered by that figure. While the
market size is huge and growing, surprisingly little is known about the
demand for sporting bets, as existing studies mostly focus on
inefficiencies of betting markets or match fixing. One reason for this
research gap is connected to the unavailability of evaluable data. While
access was not given until now, knowledge of the market is of crucial
importance for various reasons: First, in order to deepen the insights
into the economic impact of single sports events, it is crucial to
include sporting bets into corresponding analysis. So far, existing
analysis mostly focuses on ticket sales, television (TV) contracts, and
merchandise and neglects the economic value of sports bets (Roberts,
Roche, Jones, & Munday, 2016). However, data in this study suggest
that economic importance of sport betting is potentially superior with
respect to total viewership. Hence, the economic importance of sports
competition tends to be underestimated to date.
Although there is an
abundance of anecdotal evidence revealing the impacts of sports betting
on television networks and advertisers, to our knowledge, there are no
academic studies to support these claims. In this study, we measure the
impact of sports betting participation on sports television viewership
for both the NFL and EPL. By employing regression analysis, we are able
to determine not only that sports betting is, in fact, a complement to
televised sports but also the extent of this relation. It is this latter
information that should prove most useful to sports marketing
professionals in regards to organizing the appropriate marketing plan.
Second,
even though revenue of betting exchanges or bookmakers does not benefit
the clubs directly, they profit from increasing betting indirectly, for
example, with respect to viewership engagements of betting companies.
To
the best of our knowledge, the studies by Humphreys, Paul, and Weinbach
(2013) and Paul and Weinbach (2010) are rare examples that analyze
determinants of the demand for sports bets. While Paul and Weinbach
(2010) investigate the number of bets placed on National Basketball
Association (NBA) and National Hockey League (NHL) games, Humphreys et
al.’s (2013) study is the only research that parses volume of dollars
bet as they focus on The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)
men’s basketball matches. Both studies find that determinants of demand
for sports bets are comparable to the determinants that affect fan
behavior, such as teams’ qualities, TV coverage, timing, and outcome
uncertainty. Given the scarce literature on the determinants of betting
volume in relation to a fastgrowing economic importance of sports
betting, this study closes several gaps in the literature. First, this
is the first analysis for any European market. While U.S. betting is
dominated by point spread betting, European betting refers mainly to
match odds betting. European betting can have heavy underdogs and
favorites in terms of odds, whereas U.S. betting has equal odds on both
teams. Second, it is the first analysis for soccer, which is the premier
European sport with the English Premier League being the economically
most relevant league. Third, it is the initial research using betting
exchange market data. Forth, it is the first analysis of a high turnover
betting platform. On average, bettors bet 2.7 million pounds per
Premier League match. Our results confirm that the quality of
participating teams is a major determinant for the demand of sports
bets. Furthermore, time, economic factors, and uncertainty of outcome
affect demand significantly. This study is organized as follows: The
next section provides a literature review on sports betting in general
as well as potential market inefficiencies. The following empirical
analysis determines drivers of betting volumes and number of matched
bets on English Premier League.
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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---
