Becky Lynch celebrates defeating Bianca Belair at SummerSlam 2021.
World Wrestling Entertainment
It’s clear why World Wrestling Entertainment would want headlines over the prospect of bettors being allowed to wager legally on scripted matches, and never all of it has to do with attempting to drive up the potential sale price of the corporate.
Betting increases fan engagement. Just ask NFL, MLB, the NCAA – even the oldsters who organize ping pong. All of them find an enormous upside when fans are capable of bet on the games.
Massachusetts just launched mobile betting Friday, but no person there can legally bet on “Friday Night SmackDown” matches. “The WWE just isn’t an approved sports league,” the Massachusetts Gaming Commission points out.
Colorado regulators aren’t pleased in regards to the prospect even being floated. “The Colorado Division of Gaming just isn’t currently and has not considered allowing sports betting wagers on WWE matches,” they said. “At no time has any state gaming regulator in Colorado spoken with the WWE about including wagers on our approved wager list.”
Colorado statute forbids “wagers on events with fixed or predicted outcomes or purely by likelihood,” and that features the Academy Awards. Seven other states do permit Oscars betting, in some form. Indiana and Latest Jersey don’t permit live betting, and so they limit the scale of the wagers.
As in most states, Michigan only accepts requests from gambling operators or platforms, and WWE hasn’t even made a request, in line with the state gaming control board. It issued a public statement advising WWE to work with the gaming industry.
That could be an excellent greater hurdle than getting past gaming regulators.
“NFW!” replied Adam Greenblatt, CEO of BetMGM, whether he could be wanting to accept wagers on the WWE’s scripted matches. BetMGM is the U.S. market leader in iGaming, or casino games played online. He was speaking at iGamingNext, an industry conference, earlier this week. (NFW stands for “no f—-ing way.” Speak about a smackdown!)
The response from FanDuel wasn’t quite as colourful or as public, but a spokesperson said it’s highly unlikely the nation’s sports betting market leader would ever accept a bet.
DraftKings demurred, saying it could be as much as the regulators.
FanDuel , owned by Flutter Entertainment, says permitting betting on the Academy Awards, every year, is totally different to contemplating the enormity of weekly scripted programming, at the very least twice every week from the WWE.
The legal gambling industry puts a premium on avoiding scandal. The American Gaming Association, which represents each business and tribal operators, told CNBC: “Each regulators and operators must trust within the integrity of the competitions.”
Gambling insiders are skeptical that the big amount of hassle and risk of betting on scripted events are price what’s more likely to be fairly modest by way of betting activity.
“Ultimately, most industry stakeholders appear to view WWE betting as much more optically-challenging than betting on awards shows,” Sharp Alpha Advisors managing director Lloyd Danzig said.
