Super Bowl in Sin City: The NFL Bets on Vegas

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2024

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2003, a team of marketers for the city of Las Vegas were ready to debut their soon-to-be iconic “What Happens Here, Stays Here” advertising campaign. And they turned to a natural platform for the launch — the Super Bowl. But the NFL, seeking to distance itself from the capital of and only legal outlet for sports betting, said no way. Fast forward 21 years and sports betting is legal in 38 states, the NFL has countless partnerships with sports books, and the Super Bowl is coming to Vegas. So how did we get here? ESPN’s John Barr has been working with his colleagues at Outside the Lines to gauge the state of American sports betting in 2024. And today, as billions of dollars in Super Bowl bets roll in, he tracks how sports books have become a bigger and bigger part of the fan experience and whether or not we truly understand the costs. Note: ESPN launched ESPN Bet in partnership with Penn Entertainment in November 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	John Barr I'm going to start with this.
0:03.0	What intrigues you about a Super Bowl in Las Vegas in 2024?
0:07.0	Well, Clinton, there's a lot of history there.
0:10.0	You know, if you go back 21 years, the Vegas tourism industry was looking to launch a new ad
0:16.7	campaign it had partnered with a company called R&R Partners and the creative team at R&R Partners
0:22.4	they're the ones that came up with that now famous slogan,
0:26.0	What Happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. They actually called it,
0:29.6	what happens here, stays here. They came up with this ad campaign and they wanted to make a big splash, right?
0:40.0	And so they decided to make a big splash, right?
0:42.6	And so they decided to buy a Super Bowl commercial,
0:45.4	which is how you make a big splash.
0:47.5	And they planned to air that after the Super Bowl
0:51.2	following the 2002-2003 season.
0:54.3	But the problem was when the NFL got one of it,
0:57.6	they shut it down.
0:58.8	And they essentially ban the commercial.
1:01.1	For the longest time, the commercial. For the longest time the NFL didn't want associated its brand in any way with Las Vegas
1:08.0	and that's true for the other sports leagues as well.
1:10.0	There had been a number of betting scandals through the years.
1:12.0	There had been stories number of betting scandals through the years.
1:12.8	There had been stories about point shaving, fixing games, really those things associated with
1:19.2	the old Vegas that was run by the mob.
	...

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