Ben Gilbert

I think that's correct.

Many states made it legal.

And so in the episode, we said 46 million Americans bet on the NFL three years ago.

Estimates are that this year, that number has grown to 76 million Americans.

It's a giant win for driving viewership.

Versus the 46 from a couple of years ago.

Isn't it funny that if something is illegal, but people really want to do it, they do it.

But then if you make it legal, a lot more people do it.

Sort of like a lot of people use Napster, but then when you let people buy songs on iTunes, easy beats free, a hell of a lot more people started actually buying music than ever pirated it.

Yep.

Let's actually quantify it.

The estimates are that the NFL's gambling-related sponsorships are about $200 million a year between DraftKings, FanDuel, and Caesars.

And then there's these companies that they don't have a partnership with but obviously drive a ton of interest with PolyMarket and Kalshi, these prediction markets that have popped up.

So you might say like, oh, $200 million a year, that's nothing compared to the NFL's top line revenue.

But Nielsen estimated the indirect impact, like we were talking about on the league, in every way that it helps the flywheel, to be about $2.3 billion per year that the league benefits from, from the legalization of sports betting.

Each of the packages is in the sort of $2 billion neighborhood.

So that's exactly right.

And then while we're talking about revenue, revenue, it just grew even more than they expected.

So there's now, I think when we did the episode, we said something about $18 billion a year.

The league now does over $23 billion per year across all teams.