Survey says: Americans will watch the games they're gambling on

Is gambling good for televised sports? According to a recent survey conducted by Seton Hall University, the answer to that question is a resounding, yes.
A recently published survey the the Sharkey Institute of the Stillman School of Business found that a whopping 70 percent of Americans surveyed said that they would be more likely to watch games than if they weren’t gambling on them. That number leaps up to 88 percent when applied to the 18-29-year-olds that advertisers on sports broadcasts love so much.
The outcome of the Seton Hall survey suggests that gambling is a mutually beneficial activity for both professional sports leagues and the casinos and bookmakers they so fervently loathe.
Rick Gentile, director of the poll, noted how gambling creates an interaction that personalizes the action on the field and is a natural extension of activities the leagues already support, “Watching is the first step towards creating a paying fan. In the 1980s, the leagues became aware that fantasy sports were heightening interest, and eventually, they embraced it. Now they appear to be ‘all in’ with something once impossible to imagine.”
The survey did find that 66 percent of Americans agree with the leagues that regulated sports betting can somehow encourage cheating in professional sports. The survey takers did not include a follow-up question asking exactly how a regulated activity that’s been legal in Nevada for decades could encourage cheating in activities that closely scrutinized by league officials and fans alike, would actually take place.
Oddly enough, only 40 percent of the people surveyed said that approved of the Supreme Court’s decision to put decisions regarding regulated sports betting in the hands of the states.