Sports betting operators inwards the United States played a life-sustaining role inwards the NFL achieving book sponsorship revenue in 2021.

Data compiled past IEG, a worldwide consultancy inwards partnership strategies and effectualness evaluation, released its 2021 NFL sponsorship findings this week. The account elaborated a historical year for the pro football league.

IEG says the NFL received $1.8 one million million inwards sponsorship money, a 12 percent leap from 2020. The gaming manufacture — specifically sports betting — greatly contributed.

The refresh summarized that tech companies accounted for the lion’s portion of the NFL sponsorship spend last-place year. Verizon and Microsoft, for instance, make deals inwards place with the league severally worth $300 jillion and $100 one thousand thousand per year.

But after the tech giants, casinos and interactive iGaming firms accounted for the second-most NFL sponsorship dollars. 2021 was the first off twelvemonth the gaming industry was permitted to partner with the league.

Sponsorship revenue is not advertising revenue. Instead, the $1.8 one million million represents the total amount that businesses such as DraftKings and FanDuel spent to buy the rights to partner with the NFL. CNBC reports that the NFL has a minimum one-year partnership charge per unit of $10 zillion per year.

Sports Betting’s Big Four

Caesars Sportsbook, DraftKings, and FanDuel are the trio bountiful advertisers and sponsors of the NFL. In constituent of their prescribed sports betting partner designations, the triad lowest yr committed to directional $1 1000000000 to the NFL over a three-year period.

That equates to rough $333.3 1000000 a year, or $111.1 million per sportsbook. In exchange, the terzetto sports betting giants canful employment the NFL logotype and any squad insignia on their platforms and marketing materials.

A quaternary gaming entity — Genius Sports — is responsible for more or less $120 meg a yr in NFL sponsorship revenue. Genius Sports and the NFL struck a deal in April of 2021 that provides the sports betting tech truehearted sole(a) distribution rights to the league’s real-time official play-by-play statistical stream.

Gaming Finally Welcomed

The NFL kept its space — a big unity at that — from sports betting for decades, until the Supreme Court repealed the federal censor on such gambling all over but Nevada in 2018. Since the landmark ruling, the NFL has continued to easiness its opposite to betting on its games.

Seeing an opportunity to step-up stake and telecasting ratings, as well as the undeniable enthusiasm surrounding the nation’s ever-expanding sports betting market, the NFL lowest August announced it would earmark limited sportsbook advertisements during subject broadcasts.

The NFL determination allowed its ternion functionary sports betting partners — Caesars Sportsbook, DraftKings, and FanDuel — to buy TV commercials. BetMGM, PointsBet, Charles James Fox Bet, and WynnBet were later welcomed past the league.

Along with TV media buys, the NFL signed sour on teams and stadiums striking sponsorship deals with gaming and sports betting companies.

Opening unexampled prescribed partnership categories has provided the NFL an opportunity to get incremental sponsorship revenue to the sport,” said IEG Global Managing Director Simon Peter Laatz.