Post by longtimebooster on Sept 28, 2024 5:05:05 GMT -8
www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/09/28/hawaii-football-gambling-tv-deals/
Fascinating story about how late-night Hawaii games that start after midnight on the East Coast -- and are the only football games airing in that time slot -- are generating a major flow of gambling cash via bettors "chasing" their losses for the day and hoping to score a last-chance comeback.
Crazy.
There are those who argue that Hawaii should've remained independent, playing as many games as possible on the Island in the late-night slot, thus monetizing their gambling bump.
An excerpt for those without a WaPo subscription:
Gamblers love betting Hawaii football games. Can the school take advantage?
Hawaii has data showing unusually high betting activity on its late-night football games. It hopes to parlay that into a lucrative broadcast deal.
Sportsbooks profit big on Hawaii football. Sometimes bettors might, too. And with sports betting legal in 38 states, the school believes it could leverage immense gambling activity on its home games for more television money.
Those games often start just before midnight on the East Coast. This is commonly referred to as a “chase game” in gambling, the final chance to recoup losses — or win a bit more — before the sun rises on another day of opportunity. Hawaii, a football-only member of the Mountain West, has a special carve-out for its own TV deal, allowing it to shop a handful of home games per season. Its current contract with Spectrum expires at the end of June. Here is where
In recent weeks, he has started circulating a 35-page slide deck to various networks and streaming companies, piquing at least cursory interest from their executives. The deck, which The Washington Post obtained, was put together by IC360, a gambling watchdog company that provides exclusive data to regulators, college conferences and, in some cases, specific athletic departments. Kawazoe, a businessman and Hawaii booster — not to mention a UNLV grad and former intern at the Bellagio on The Strip — pumped a conference contact to get an IC360 presentation, hoping to show how the money gambled on Hawaii home games illustrates untapped TV value. Then, with permission from Hawaii Athletic Director Craig Angelos, he began operating as a third-party connector between the school and potential new partners.
Angelos told The Post he had an “investigatory” Zoom call with a major streaming service this month. One catch, though, is that intrigued networks would be significantly more intrigued if Hawaii had broken off from the Mountain West and went independent in football. That’s no longer an option — at least for the foreseeable future — after Hawaii signed on Thursday to remain a football-only member until 2032. With conference realignment in full swing again, the Mountain West offered financial incentives for a renewed commitment from its remaining schools. Hawaii chose that over leaping into the abyss.
In theory, independence would have given Hawaii more latitude to schedule its home games and dictate start times, which could have put even more contests in that chase game window. But because Hawaii will still have its TV carve-out, sticking with the conference hasn’t deterred efforts to monetize the scheduling quirk. They just might look a tad different now.
“There is such a correlation it’s ridiculous, actually,” Stephen Master, a former Nielsen executive, now a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, said of the relationship between potential TV viewership and gambling handle, the amount of money bet on a game.
“The people at networks I’ve talked to, they’re like, ‘I see it, but when I take it to the higher-ups and have the conversation, it’s: ‘What do we price it at?’” said Kawazoe, who also heads Hawaii’s donor-funded name, image and likeness (NIL) collective. “That’s the big question: What is this worth?”
The 35-page IC360 deck contains a lot of data, none of which makes any recommendations about TV valuations. Angelos admits to not knowing much about gambling or TV rights, leaving the details to Kawazoe. But the AD pointed right at the estimated $51 million handle for Hawaii’s September matchup with Stanford last season, a Friday night home game that kicked off at 5 p.m. local time (or 11 Eastern). The next-closest handle for a Hawaii game was $16.1 million, still well above the power conference average of $11.5 million. Hawaii finished with the second-highest full-season handle in the Mountain West, $1 million below UNLV despite not playing in a bowl game.
More recently, IC360 data showed that Hawaii’s Week Zero matchup in August with Delaware State, which kicked off at 6 p.m. local time, generated an estimated handle of $27.3 million. A fair question, then, would be why Hawaii’s TV ratings aren’t already soaring. The answer is wonky.
Fascinating story about how late-night Hawaii games that start after midnight on the East Coast -- and are the only football games airing in that time slot -- are generating a major flow of gambling cash via bettors "chasing" their losses for the day and hoping to score a last-chance comeback.
Crazy.
There are those who argue that Hawaii should've remained independent, playing as many games as possible on the Island in the late-night slot, thus monetizing their gambling bump.
An excerpt for those without a WaPo subscription:
Gamblers love betting Hawaii football games. Can the school take advantage?
Hawaii has data showing unusually high betting activity on its late-night football games. It hopes to parlay that into a lucrative broadcast deal.
Sportsbooks profit big on Hawaii football. Sometimes bettors might, too. And with sports betting legal in 38 states, the school believes it could leverage immense gambling activity on its home games for more television money.
Those games often start just before midnight on the East Coast. This is commonly referred to as a “chase game” in gambling, the final chance to recoup losses — or win a bit more — before the sun rises on another day of opportunity. Hawaii, a football-only member of the Mountain West, has a special carve-out for its own TV deal, allowing it to shop a handful of home games per season. Its current contract with Spectrum expires at the end of June. Here is where
In recent weeks, he has started circulating a 35-page slide deck to various networks and streaming companies, piquing at least cursory interest from their executives. The deck, which The Washington Post obtained, was put together by IC360, a gambling watchdog company that provides exclusive data to regulators, college conferences and, in some cases, specific athletic departments. Kawazoe, a businessman and Hawaii booster — not to mention a UNLV grad and former intern at the Bellagio on The Strip — pumped a conference contact to get an IC360 presentation, hoping to show how the money gambled on Hawaii home games illustrates untapped TV value. Then, with permission from Hawaii Athletic Director Craig Angelos, he began operating as a third-party connector between the school and potential new partners.
Angelos told The Post he had an “investigatory” Zoom call with a major streaming service this month. One catch, though, is that intrigued networks would be significantly more intrigued if Hawaii had broken off from the Mountain West and went independent in football. That’s no longer an option — at least for the foreseeable future — after Hawaii signed on Thursday to remain a football-only member until 2032. With conference realignment in full swing again, the Mountain West offered financial incentives for a renewed commitment from its remaining schools. Hawaii chose that over leaping into the abyss.
In theory, independence would have given Hawaii more latitude to schedule its home games and dictate start times, which could have put even more contests in that chase game window. But because Hawaii will still have its TV carve-out, sticking with the conference hasn’t deterred efforts to monetize the scheduling quirk. They just might look a tad different now.
“There is such a correlation it’s ridiculous, actually,” Stephen Master, a former Nielsen executive, now a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, said of the relationship between potential TV viewership and gambling handle, the amount of money bet on a game.
“The people at networks I’ve talked to, they’re like, ‘I see it, but when I take it to the higher-ups and have the conversation, it’s: ‘What do we price it at?’” said Kawazoe, who also heads Hawaii’s donor-funded name, image and likeness (NIL) collective. “That’s the big question: What is this worth?”
The 35-page IC360 deck contains a lot of data, none of which makes any recommendations about TV valuations. Angelos admits to not knowing much about gambling or TV rights, leaving the details to Kawazoe. But the AD pointed right at the estimated $51 million handle for Hawaii’s September matchup with Stanford last season, a Friday night home game that kicked off at 5 p.m. local time (or 11 Eastern). The next-closest handle for a Hawaii game was $16.1 million, still well above the power conference average of $11.5 million. Hawaii finished with the second-highest full-season handle in the Mountain West, $1 million below UNLV despite not playing in a bowl game.
More recently, IC360 data showed that Hawaii’s Week Zero matchup in August with Delaware State, which kicked off at 6 p.m. local time, generated an estimated handle of $27.3 million. A fair question, then, would be why Hawaii’s TV ratings aren’t already soaring. The answer is wonky.
