Come for the game, stay for the gambling. Or maybe vice versa.

With the ongoing expansion of legalized gambling, teams and leagues are incorporating the opportunity to place a bet as part of the fan experience. Few have gone as far as Real Madrid, which is building a casino into its renovated stadium.

The revamped Santiago Bernabeu will essentially be a full-service entertainment center where a famous soccer team happens to play its home games. Construction on the stadium, which originally opened in 1947, is scheduled to finish in summer of 2022 and will also incorporate a restaurant, museum, and event space.

Other leagues are exploring their comfort levels with integrating gambling into stadiums.

• The Washington Nationals have plans to set up betting windows and kiosks at Nationals Park and are working to allow betting from seats.
• The NFL still prohibits in-stadium betting areas and kiosks but will allow “gambling lounges” that showcase mobile betting options. 
• Fans of Fulham in the Premier League expressed concern over the team’s main sponsor being gambling operator BetVictor, with 44% saying it made them uncomfortable and 22% saying they wouldn’t buy the club’s shirt because of the association. 

While Texas and other states are lifting COVID-related restrictions, others such as California currently only allow 20% capacity at games, and pre-pandemic game-day revenue is unlikely to return soon. Meanwhile, the at-home watching experience continues to improve as networks and tech companies compete for fans. 

Though not every team is ready to go as far as the Nationals and Real Madrid, the potential for revenue alone is likely to bring live betting to more stadiums around the world. In 2020, U.S. casinos pulled in a record $1.5 billion in revenue from their sportsbooks, per the American Gaming Association.

When Alexey Molchanov dove into Lake Baikal in southern Siberia after walking on its one-meter thick ice, he wasn’t doing it to see how long he could last in the cold.

The champion free diver broke the world record for the deepest free dive under ice with fins; he now has 20 world records to his name.

Diving is a family tradition for Molchanov, whose mother, Natalia, set 41 of her own world records and won 23 world championship titles. In all of her glory, Natalia Molchanov never sought sponsorship but rather taught others how to dive. She became the only woman in free diving’s history to break the 100-meter barrier in 2013. Two years later, she did not resurface during a recreational dive in Ibiza and was never found.

Alexey kept his mom’s teachings alive  and started manufacturing free diving gear under the Molchanovs brand. It includes three different apparel collections, top-of-the-line wetsuits, flippers, and other items. Molchanovs also offers free diving certifications, and Alexey heads the Russian Free Diving Federation.

To this day, Natalia’s son and curriculums across Russia and Eastern Europe still use her techniques and knowledge on the sport.

“Free divers like exploring their physical and mental limits,” said German champion Anna von Boetticher. “We like challenging ourselves. We are full of curiosity in what we can do, what else we can experience, and cold water is a very intense experience.”

A 2019 report estimated that the equipment market for free diving’s sister sport, scuba diving, would grow to $1.38 billion by 2022.

Genshin Impact, a cross-platform role-playing video game developed and published by Shanghai-based miHoYo, has set a new standard for mobile video game earnings.

Since its launch in September 2020, the mobile version of the game has generated more than $1 billion in player spending, per Sensor Tower Intelligence. It’s the fastest mobile title to reach that mark on the App Store and Google Play, beating out Niantic’s Pokémon GO.

It took Pokémon GO nine months to generate $1 billion, but Genshin Impact got there in six. Its best month was October, when it brought in $233.7 million. China is Genshin Impact’s largest market, accounting for 29.5% of global player spending — $302 million in revenue. Japan is the second-largest, with $278 million in revenue so far. 

Genshin Impact’s success has helped make miHoYo more competitive with Chinese conglomerate and mobile gaming leader Tencent. Tencent is behind PUBG Mobile and Honor of Kings, the top two revenue-generating mobile titles in 2020.

But MiHoYo still has a long way to go to fully measure up. The company made $774 million in revenue in 2020. Tencent, by contrast, pulled in $73.8 billion.

Francis Ngannou’s second-round knockout of heavyweight champ Stipe Miocic at Saturday’s UFC 260 marked the official end of the sport’s six-year apparel run with Reebok. 

Venum, a brand known well to those who follow MMA, will now take over as exclusive global outfitting and apparel partner — a deal that reportedly won’t be as lucrative or long as UFC’s deal with Reebok.

The Reebok agreement was worth upward of $80 million over the life of the partnership. Fighters received much of the money generated from the deal that created the fighter incentive program, which coincided with the ban on fighters promoting other clothing and brands during fight week.

When the Venum deal was first announced last July, UFC said that there would be “across the board increases” in money paid to fighters under the deal. 

The UFC’s fighter incentive program paid fighters between $3,500 to $40,000 per fight appearance, a total of about $40 million over the six years. UFC president Dana White called the Reebok-UFC partnership “groundbreaking” and said that it “elevated” both brands when he bid it farewell. 

Roughly half the value of the Reebok deal came from merchandise to outfit fighters and members of their teams. A person with knowledge of the deal told Front Office Sports that the Reebok deal didn’t cover the full cost of the fighter incentive program. 

Venum and UFC haven’t released images of the fight kits and apparel that fighters will wear starting in April, although a look at the gear leaked on Twitter earlier this month.

Reebok will remain the official UFC footwear provider through the end of 2021.