Survey: 38M Americans Plan to Gamble on NFL During 2019 Season

Tim Daniels @TimDanielsBRFeatured ColumnistSeptember 4, 2019

NFL football betting odds are displayed on a board, Tuesday, June 5, 2018, inside the Race and Sports Book at Dover Downs Hotel and Casino in Dover, Del. The market for legal sports gambling in the United States widened significantly on Tuesday with the expansion of single-game sports bets in Delaware, less than a month after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for states to accept the bets. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

Results from an American Gaming Association (AGA) survey released Wednesday estimated 38 million Americans, or 15 percent of the adult population, are expected to bet on the NFL during the 2019 season, which kicks off Thursday with a clash between the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears at Soldier Field.

ESPN's David Purdum provided details from the AGA survey, which also projected seven million of those who wager on the NFL will do so at casino sportsbooks. That's a 20.6 percent increase from last year as more states legalize sports betting.

Although a significant majority of gamblers (75 percent) said betting on a game would make them more likely to watch it, the NFL has remained hesitant to reverse its opposition to the practice, per Purdum.

Hans Schroeder, chief operating officer for NFL media and business, told ESPN the league didn't plan to allow in-game betting at its venues—even in states where it's legal—for the upcoming season.

"That's not something that's on our immediate horizon," Schroeder said last month. "We'll continue to evaluate the landscape as it evolves, but that's not something that's in the plans for 2019."

In May 2018, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell released a statement explaining the biggest concern was large-scale betting potentially influencing the result of games.

"It's a very strongly held view in the NFL, it has been for decades that the threat that gambling could occur in the NFL or fixing of games or that any outcome could be influenced by the outside could be very damaging to the NFL and very difficult to ever recover from," he said.

The continued opposition comes despite the NFL's decision to move the Oakland Raiders to the gambling mecca of Las Vegas starting in 2020.

So far, 13 states have legalized sports gambling, but the AGA survey showed a majority of the $150 billion in annual sports bets are made via offshore sportsbooks or local bookies, per Purdum.

Caesars Sportsbook lists the Bears as three-point favorites for Thursday's season opener against the longtime rival Packers.