How Live Betting Affected the Sports Industry

Live Betting Has Become the Industry's Engine

In the US, live wagering made up 62.35% of the online sports wagering market in 2025, according to industry data, and is projected to grow at a 13.62% compound annual rate through 2031. 

In April 2024, DraftKings reported that during the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals alone, live wagers made up over 70% of its total betting handle on those games. The platform updated its live data feeds and real-time visualizations and reported significant increases in user engagement and app session duration. 

Bettors Watch More

Having money on a game fundamentally changes how and how much a viewer watches. A 2020 study by consulting firm Altman Solon, drawing on survey data from 14,000 respondents worldwide, found that in the US, 88% of sports bettors regularly watched sports, compared to just 41% of non-bettors.
The Harris Poll found that 88% of sports bettors agreed they enjoy watching sports more when betting on the outcome, and 63% reported watching more sports since they started gambling. A third of sports gamblers in the same poll said they watched several games every day.

While pre-game wagers can be placed and forgotten. In-play bets on next score, next possession, player yardage milestones, and quarter outcomes force the bettor to follow the game from start to finish and pay attention to every play! 

A Variety Intelligence Platform study found that when a game becomes one-sided, 25% of sports bettors who have no wager will stop watching entirely, and nearly half will disengage. When a bet is in play, the rate of bettors who stop watching drops to just 10%, and those who continue watching with full attention surges from roughly 29% to 50%.

Betting is Now Content

Sports broadcasters have started building their entire content and revenue strategies around it. ESPN signaled this shift with its 10-year, $1.5 billion deal with Penn Entertainment to launch ESPN BET. The later pivot to a partnership with DraftKings only reinforces the fact that the country’s biggest sports broadcaster now treats betting integration as a core part of its business.

Odds and betting talk now appear regularly across pregame shows, shoulder programming, and alternate betting-focused broadcasts. A CBC and University of Bristol study found that gambling-related content made up approximately 20% of airtime during certain sports broadcasts.

Annual US sports media rights are expected to reach $29.54 billion in 2025, rising to $34.72 billion by 2027, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Sports betting revenues are part of the justification for those escalating costs, as sportsbook partnerships provide broadcasters and leagues with a supplementary commercial layer that advertising alone cannot provide. In 2023, online sports betting accounted for $154 million in US local TV spot advertising spend.

Leagues have sold official data rights to sports betting platforms, and teams have signed venue and broadcast sponsorship deals with sportsbooks. The NBA allows streaming of a final quarter for a $1.99 fee, a product designed largely for in-game bettors who want to follow a specific period's outcome. NBC Sports developed its BetCast, an alternate broadcast that incorporates live odds and micro-betting directly into the stream.

Micro-Betting and the Atomization of the Game

The most recent and fastest-growing development within live sports betting is micro-betting (wagering on individual plays, possessions, pitches, and shots instead of game-level outcomes). 
DraftKings offered betting on an unprecedented 100,000 plays across a single weekend of college football. Industry data indicates micro-betting grew 214% year-over-year in 2024 and now represents 38% of all in-play wagers across major platforms.

Rather than focusing on which team wins or loses, the bettor is immersed in a granular, real-time statistical contest that runs parallel to the game itself. Every rush attempt, every third-down conversion, every free throw becomes a decision point.