Sports Gambling Cultivation

In 2018, the United States Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) and deemed the act unconstitutional. This decision opened the proverbial floodgates for legalized sports gambling, increasing advertising while transforming the contemporary sport-media landscape. Consumers have been bombarded with new in-game graphics, targeted advertising, gambling language, and constant gambling-specific content. Today’s sport-media landscape is being redefined by pervasive and near-ubiquitous sport-gambling promotion, advertising, in-game discussion, and conversation woven into the fabric of mediated sport coverage. In this chapter, we conceptualize this shift toward the formation of the contemporary sports-gambling-media industrial complex. This shift is creating an environment that promotes, engages, and ultimately normalizes sports betting. Examining this through the lens of cultivation theory, our exploration of this sports gambling and media convergence examines two primary promotional strategies for consumer engagement: traditional advertising and integrated marketing. We explore each, placing emphasis on integrative marketing as a new and strategic method through which gambling companies connect with, appeal to, influence, and ultimately recruit new consumers through subliminal and coercive means. We consider the theoretical and practical impacts this convergence has on sport coverage, consumers, and the broader sport-media landscape.

Advertising · Amateur · Appeal · Business · Convergence (economics) · Conversation · Economics · Political science · Politics · Promotion (chess) · Public relations · Sociology · Digital Games and Media · Gambling Behavior and Treatments · Law · Sports Analytics and Performance