Off Shore Gaming Association

“We just don’t want the proliferation of gambling on our sport”, an NFL official told me when Delaware was doing their best to implement sports betting. Now it appears that gambling is GOOD, as long as it a) is not at the expense of the NFL game and b) helps to fatten the wallets of owners. The news came this week that the NFL will allow teams to accept advertisements for casinos and other state-licensed gambling-related establishments during the next two seasons just to prove that greed and hypocrisy have no bounds.

“This all started in 2009 when the NFL got involved with state lotteries when the New England Patriots put their logo and name behind scratch-off lottery tickets. By the time the NFL season started nearly half of all NFL teams had signed up with lotteries. The scratch-off tickets have been very successful with annual sales for just about every team-themed game exceeding the 10 million dollar figure in sales. But you won’t find that kind of information anywhere on the NFL’s website. In fact, there are no articles relating to the state lottery/ NFL partnerships anywhere on the site.

Now the NFL has decided that sponsoring Lottery tickets isn’t enough, they also need to take casino advertising. Gambling ads and partnerships with gambling companies are good as long as their is no betting on the NFL product itself.

For the league which has fought long and hard to keep gambling on it’s sport just in Nevada, allowing casino ads wreaks of double standards. New Jersey is heading to the Supreme Court at some point in the next 12 months fighting to repeal the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) and permit sportsbetting in the Garden State. My best bet is that the NFL will launch a major offensive to thwart New Jersey’s effort. There will be fact and figures about how gambling impacts families, kids will want to bet on the games and so forth. And, as in the Delaware case, the state will bring up the Lottery partnership, and now can heap Casino gambling onto that pile.

Many of my friends and colleagues do not see why I am outraged by this latest gambling-meets-NFL development. It is because you are either pro-gambling or anti-gambling. It’s a pretty black-and-white issue. You can be pro-gambling if you profit from the activity, but don’t participate in it. But you can’t be anti-gambling if you are turning a profit from it. So which is the NFL – pro or anti gambling? The quote above holds the key, “on our sport”.

Maybe the U.S. gambling industry should just offer the NFL a cut of the action, like their Lottery partnership does. It is not a far reach to see that the NFL would allow betting on its sport as long as the league could generate revenue from it. After all, the NFL has shown that they are pro-gambling as long as there is profit attached to it. Maybe that is why the NFL is now aligning itself with casinos. The NFL may be envisioning team-themed sportsbooks in every city where an NFL franchise has taken root. Or instead maybe they are aware that PASPA is on shaky Constitutional grounds and a Supreme Court fight will be very costly. Right now The league does not get one dime from Las Vegas’ weekly handle on NFL games, but in a post-PASPA world conceivably there is revenue to be made.

Frankly, I can’t wait to go to the ‘Pack Room’ at the Oneida Casino in Green Bay to bet on the storied NFL franchise or attend the ‘Lion’s Den’ at the Greektown Casino in downtown Detroit. It’s the next logical step if the NFL continues to look for ways to ‘partner’ with gambling companies.

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The NFL is sure going to be busy in 2010. And not promoting its product outside the United States or ramping up its fledgling TV network. No, the NFL, or should I say the NFL’s lawyers, are going to be busy fighting new legislation introduced this week from several states and a Supreme Court fight.

Last year, the tiny state of Delaware spent over $600,000 in legal fees to ensure passage of a very watered-down version of a sports betting bill. However, by providing just multi-game betting (parlay and teaser cards), the state still turned a profit. Now, Delaware Gov. Jack Markell has announced a decision to appeal an August ruling, by the 3rd circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, to the Supreme Court! That’s gonna incur some legal fees. Still, the state has to convince the court to hear the argument, thus, expanded sports betting in the 1st State is still a long shot.

The NFL and other sports leagues were able to convince the Third Circuit Court that Delaware should only be allowed to offer sports betting in the fashion that it was offered before the passage of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) that was passed in 1992. The federal law includes a partial exemption for Delaware, Nevada, Montana and Oregon, allowing them to have sports betting “to the extent” it was “conducted” previously. PASPA is really the one piece of legislation that is stunting any hope for the growth of sports betting in the U.S. If the case does get heard by the land’s highest court, it will be, as far as I know, the first time the Supreme Court has heard a challenge to the federal law.

However, help may be on the horizon in other cases that are sure to be heard throughout the land. Perhaps on the success of Delaware, the State’s lawyers may be getting assistance from newly sponsored legislation in two states to void PASPA.

New Jersey made a bit of a play last year as State Sen. Raymond Lesniak introduced legislation to allow sports betting in Atlantic City, mainly as a way to bolster the dying casino town’s revenue stream. He was able to garner support from then-governor John Corzine and had the assistance of iMEGA, but his bill did not gain much traction. Just two weeks into the New Year and Leasniak is already making another play. He has introduced an act “permitting wagering at casinos in-person and through an account wagering system using telephone, Internet and other means on the results of professional and collegiate sport or athletic events”. Talk about going for the gusto! Lesniak is not only including sports betting, but, in the face of certain litigation by the NFL and NCAA, he is also adding in the Internet. Yes, internet wagering has made it into his 2010 version of the bill. So, the Justice Department will most likely also have something to say about this piece of legislation.

But Lesniak is serious, already ramping-up the rhetoric. He has been quoted as saying, “People are doing it. They’re doing it every day. They’re doing it for the NCAA tournament. They’re doing it for the Super Bowl and professional football. But we can’t regulate it and run it in the state of New Jersey.” Finally, someone who gets it – gamblers are gonna gamble. In fact, I just got doing it, and I want to do it again! Lesniak is also considering suing the Federal Government to overturn the PASA law.

Also this week, out of left-field, came a House Resolution from legislators in Missouri, of all places. Can it be that Gary Kaplan and David Carruthers are working their St. Louis jailers over to have their lawmakers allow sports betting? After all, the state probably owns the URL betonsports.com after taking down one of the largest sports gambling houses on the Internet. Was this really the whole reason that BOS was indicted and convicted – to pave the way for legal sports betting in the state?

The piece of legislation, House Concurrent Resolution No. 22 urges the United States Congress to remove the federal ban on sports wagering. The best line in the document is when the State legislators declare, I guess after the demise of BOS and little or no change in the gaming landscape, that “the federal sports wagering ban is not effective in curbing illegal sports gambling.” I wonder when the light bulb went on to figure that out? But cynicism aside, this resolution is being sent to the Majority and Minority Leaders of the United States Congress and to each member of the Missouri Congressional delegation. Hopefully, it will have some impact.

So, all of this legislation and legal wrangling could be a perfect storm for the NFL, NCAA and other sports leagues. PASPA was passed nearly two decades ago and all that has happened since then is the explosion of the multi-billion dollar Internet gambling industry and the continued expansion of gambling throughout the country. Following the success that Delaware has seen with just multi-game wagering, in just their first year of operation, and with states looking for any way to generate revenue, perhaps this is just the leading edge of the PASAP perfect storm. Next week Florida is going to discuss Internet wagering in the state capitol and Indian tribes in California are attempting to build a consensus on Internet poker issues. Perhaps we are approaching a perfect storm for Internet wagering as well.

My prediction for all of this for 2010? If states continue to struggle to find revenue, PASAP will have a tough time continuing to be the law of the land. I expect to see other states put pressure on the Federal government as well. And, oh, yeah, a whole bunch of lawyers are going to make a whole bunch of money!

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