The Growth in Marketing Alliances between US Professional Sport and Legalised Gambling Entities: Are We Putting Sport Consumers at Risk?

Over the past decade, the United States has experienced unprecedented growth in the legalised gambling industry. Because of increased societal and governmental endorsement, legalised gambling has become a widely accepted form of entertainment. Concurrently, US professional sport organisations have begun loosening the internal policies and restrictions that have historically established a firewall between professional sport organisations and legalised gambling entities, resulting in a recent proliferation of marketing alliances between the two. Detractors of the widespread growth of gambling decry its potential health and socioeconomic risks, raising the spectre that sport organisations’ marketing alliances with legalised gambling entities may have profound effects on sport consumers. This article suggests the growing need for academic research to determine the potential effects that legalised gambling entities’ sport sponsorship may have upon the attitudes and behaviours of sport consumers. Drawing upon prior attitudinal and behavioural-effects research involving other potentially harmful products with lengthy histories of sport sponsorship, namely tobacco and alcohol, this article provides a research agenda that should be of importance to sport managers, as well as to social action groups who may eventually seek to challenge sport sponsorship by legalised gambling entities.