{"id":1136,"date":"2012-04-13T10:27:28","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T14:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.osga.com\/wordpress\/?p=1136"},"modified":"2012-04-13T10:29:32","modified_gmt":"2012-04-13T14:29:32","slug":"is-the-nfl-really-pro-gambling-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.osga.com\/wordpress\/is-the-nfl-really-pro-gambling-after-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the NFL Really Pro-Gambling After All?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“We just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want the proliferation of gambling on our sport\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, 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 <\/strong>will allow teams to accept advertisements for casinos <\/strong>and other state-licensed gambling-related establishments during the next two seasons just to prove that greed and hypocrisy have no bounds.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find that kind of information anywhere on the NFL\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s website. In fact, there are no articles relating to the state lottery\/ NFL partnerships anywhere on the site.<\/p>\n

Now the NFL has decided that sponsoring Lottery tickets isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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.<\/p>\n

For the league which has fought long and hard to keep gambling on it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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<\/strong>) and permit sportsbetting in the Garden State. My best bet is that the NFL will launch a major offensive to thwart New Jersey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a pretty black-and-white issue. You can be pro-gambling if you profit from the activity, but don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t participate in it. But you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be anti-gambling if you are turning a profit from it. So which is the NFL \u00e2\u20ac\u201c pro or anti gambling? The quote above holds the key, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153on our sport\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 weekly handle on NFL games, but in a post-PASPA world conceivably there is revenue to be made. <\/p>\n

Frankly, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wait to go to the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcPack Room\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 at the Oneida Casino in Green Bay to bet on the storied NFL franchise or attend the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcLion\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Den\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 at the Greektown Casino in downtown Detroit. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the next logical step if the NFL continues to look for ways to ‘partner’ with gambling companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“We just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want the proliferation of gambling on our sport\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, 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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[119,73,65,71,42],"class_list":["post-1136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bets-and-more","tag-casino-ads","tag-new-jersey","tag-nfl","tag-paspa","tag-sportsbooks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.osga.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.osga.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.osga.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.osga.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.osga.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1136"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.osga.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1143,"href":"https:\/\/www.osga.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions\/1143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.osga.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.osga.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.osga.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}