American Gaming Association President and CEO Bill Miller is hitting hard against claims that regulated sports betting is responsible for an uptick in ad sales on this year’s Olympic Games broadcasts on NBC. Miller said the argument presented in a Washington Post editorial titled, “Sports betting ads are out of control. For solutions, look overseas.”, amounted to a “false premise/false conclusion.”
The editorial, which carried the Washington Post’s Editorial Board byline, is a thinly veiled call for European-style regulations on sportsbook advertising in the US. For reasons that aren’t really clear, the editorial suggests that sports betting operators are responsible for a surge in ad buys during Olympic Games broadcasts this summer.
It goes on to suggest that countries that legalize sports betting ultimately wind up regretting the decision saying, “After the initial excitement over new revenue from gambling taxation, several U.S. states are having second thoughts and considering how to limit the collateral damage. Fortunately, other countries have run some experiments for them.”
Not surprisingly, Miller did not agree with any part of the editorial and posted a blistering retort on LinkedIn saying, “Any industry observer, including those quoted in supporting evidence presented by the Board, would tell you the Olympics are a minor event on the sports betting calendar, and there is no indication that ad sale increases have been driven by sports betting,”
Miller went on to rip apart the WaPo’s feeble arguments, and their source materials, adding, pointing out that ad sales are actually slumping for the 2024 Olympic Games. He closes out his rebuttal by calling out the editorial’s Trojan Horse design saying, “As previous Post editorials on our industry have demonstrated, the Board stuck to a familiar format – lead with a false premise, rely on misleading data, and draw a faulty conclusion.”