Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. This old saying darted through my mind every time I read about the National Football League (NFL) lobbying against Representative Barney Frank’s internet gambling bill, HR 2267. Fortunately, the league ended its opposition to the bill in August because an amendment was added that would prohibit licensed online gambling operators from offering sports betting.
That doesn’t mean that the NFL’s stance on the whole issue is any less tilt-inducing to me, though. Before I get to my rant, I should say that given the NFL’s position on sports betting, I completely understand why the league, and other sports leagues for that matter, could care less about poker players. If a bill that legalizes and regulates online poker also does so for online sports betting, poker is unimportant collateral damage if the NFL manages to get the entire bill shot down. Guilt by association. I think most poker players feel the same way about sports betting. While we feel that people should be allowed to bet online, if throwing sports betting under the bus is the way for poker to come out on top, well… sorry sports bettors. Sucks to be you.
So, while I get why poker players are not a concern of the NFL, the league’s hatred of sports betting just doesn’t make sense to me. I mean, they hate it so much that they hired someone to lobby against Frank’s bill. They feel that sports betting hurts the integrity of the game. But as far as I know, there have never been any sports betting or game fixing scandals of note involving the NFL. Besides, while it’s of course possible, I find it extremely unlikely that an NFL player would be able to be influenced by criminal types to fix a game. Players get paid handsome sums of money for their skills, so the fee that someone would have to pay a player to, say, lose on purpose, would have to be pretty substantial. Plus, it would be quite difficult for a player to throw a game by himself without it being extremely obvious. I just don’t think it would realistically happen.
Getting back to my opening sentence, what really gets me is that without sports betting, the NFL wouldn’t be nearly as popular as it is today. Football season is like an extended Christmas shopping season for sports books and the Super Bowl is like Black Friday. Millions of people who either don’t have a strong rooting interest or whose team has no chance remain interested because they have money on the games. These people subscribe to DirecTV’s football package, make sure they get the NFL Network on cable, watch the commercials that feed the NFL’s coffers, and view the ads on the NFL’s website.
And all that doesn’t include fantasy football, which the NFL loves. The hypocrisy of that should be obvious. Fantasy football is gambling. It’s just in different form. Yes, many, if not most, people play fantasy for free and put no money into their leagues. But millions of people bet at least a few bucks each season, hoping that their team will win the league for a nice payout. Of course it’s gambling. Fantasy players are betting on the performance of the players they draft rather than on the performance of an NFL team. And the payouts come at the end of the season instead of at the end of each game.
One big thing that the NFL is ignoring in its loathing of online sports betting is that it’s easier to catch game fixing and the like online than it is offline. Online, all wagering history is recorded and suspicious trends are tracked. For example, in 2007, millions of dollars were bet on the European sports book Betfair against tennis player Nikolay Davydenko in a match in which he was a strong favorite and had already won the first set. He then withdrew from the match in the third set with an apparent injury. Betfair, in accordance with its agreement with the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), notified the ATP of this suspicious activity and cancelled all wagers on the match.
What the NFL should do is partner with the online sports books to help fight sports betting crime. Over a dozen online sports books in Europe are members of the European Sports Security Association (ESSA), which has a “mandate to keep sport clean and free from manipulation.” The ESSA members alert each other if any irregular betting patterns are detected, and in turn, alert the sports leagues and regulatory bodies. A system like this seems so obvious. In the meantime, the NFL and other professional sports leagues in the U.S. would apparently rather have online sports betting go underground with no protections, either for the bettors or the leagues, in place.
I am pleased that the NFL has dropped its opposition to the Frank bill, but it still needs to get its head out of the sand and get with the times. It owes much of its popularity to sports betting. Accept it and embrace the technological advancements that will protect the game better than prohibition will.
