Another partnership between a college and a sportsbook has bitten the dust. The Lansing State Journal is reporting that Michigan State University is terminating its partnership with Caesars a full four years ahead of schedule.
“Initially, it was a good thing, but I don’t think it’s in our best interest moving forward,” MSU Athletic Director Alan Haller told the publication.
The deal was reportedly worth $9 million for the school but that money came with the serious headache of public perception.
As recently as December Caesars was publicly defending the partnership as well as a similar deal with LSU, which remains intact.
“We were approached by a marketing company representing a number of universities and we evaluated those in the context of the goal of bringing our brand forward and presenting it to their alumni,” Co-President of Caesars Sports and Online Gaming Eric Hession told the Massachusetts Gaming Commission last year. “We also reviewed the statistics of the stadiums to ensure that a very high percentage of the attendees were over 21 and that the average age was significantly over 21.”
The deal is technically through Playfly Sports, the multimedia rights partner of MSU as well as LSU.
Critics of the partnership include Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who has written numerous open letters calling for the end of these partnerships.
Even the MSU staff wanted the deal terminated. The group started a petition for the school to cease working with Caesars in April.
The cessation of the deal comes as there is more scrutiny than ever on the relationship between sports betting and schools as a slate of incidents around college baseball have made headlines.
With the termination of this deal, as well PointsBet ending its partnerships with both the University of Colorado and the University of Maryland, that leaves only LSU and Denver as the colleges with existing sportsbook partnerships. Like MSU, LSU works with Caesars while the University of Denver formed a partnership with SuperBook in 2022.
SBC Americas reached out to Caesars for comment but has yet to receive a response.
