those that are willing to pay for a sports streaming channel are going to be significantly more likely to gamble on sports and sports gamblers will be willing to shell out $50 a month to feed their habit. A streaming channel gives the content owners direct, interactive access to gamblers who are worth a lot more money to them than casual sports fans eyeballs on commercials. Pretty much everything that has happened in the last five years in sports broadcasting, conference realignment, etc is all based on the legalization of sports gambling. Why was FOX willing to pay the big 10 almost double what they had been paying, because they knew control of the content would open the door to interactive gambling, the growth in ad revenue from being bombarded by betting advertisement is nothing compared to in game direct betting. They've been prepping it for a couple years now with the crawls including updated odds, especially on USFL and XFL where the gambling crap is part of the broadcast.