The big loser in this might be the NHL and the NHLPA(Players association). The NHL salary cap has gone up alot in the past few years and TV is a big driver of that.

It seems like 50% of commercials are for gambling. If this goes away then the networks TV revenue will almost certainly go down and that has the potential to make the NHL TV rights less valuable to the networks.

The NHL wouldn't be alone here but of hte big 4 north American sports it the most exposed here.

Gambling improves viewership. You have people across the world now watching these small market games with a microscope because of some five leg parlay bet they have going on with the goalies stat line.

Smaller sports have less gambling revenue, but also less revenue overall, and player salaries are lower - so e.g. professional curlers might be proportionally worse off with the lost revenue than NHL players.

Curling is basically the only sport I watch, and I'm on the fence about abandoning it due to gambling ads.

The existence of a salary cap is evidence that the players' unions need to advocate harder for their interests. Can you think of a "maximum allowable salary" in any other industry? It's clearly cartel-like behavior by the franchises. The players bring like 95% of the value in professional sports.