Next week, National Football League players, coaches, fans and executives will gather for an event that was almost unthinkable just 10 years ago: the Super Bowl in Las Vegas, the gambling capital of the United States.
Since the Supreme Court struck down in 2018 a federal law that effectively banned sports betting outside of Nevada — a ban once championed by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell — the NFL has embraced the gambling industry. It has forged partnerships worth nearly $1 billion in five years with sports betting companies and allowed a sports book to operate at one of its stadiums. It now even has a team in Las Vegas, which the league avoided for decades because any connection was seen as a threat to the integrity of the game.
However, such rapid incorporation of sports gambling into league culture has led to frightening contradictions. The NFL is pushing to expand and profit from sports betting while still protecting itself from the potential pitfalls it has long condemned. While the league donates money to promote responsible gambling, its broadcasts are filled with ads for sports betting companies. The NFL is part of a growing mechanism that encourages casual fans to place regular bets on games while punishing league officials — mostly players — who might do the same.
The NFL and other sports leagues “moved quickly into this area, fully considering the revenue-related benefits of engaging in sports gambling, but not necessarily thinking about everything that could go wrong,” said Marc Edelman, law professor and sports director. in ethics at Baruch College in New York.
“Even if it makes perfect sense to prohibit team employees from betting on games,” Mr. Edelman added, “there is arguably a level of cognitive dissonance” when NFL players and staff frequently encounter content that encourages gambling, including of marking at the stages. and betting odds on NFL telecasts while they go about their business. League partnerships also give gaming companies the right to use the NFL logo in their marketing and participate in major NFL events.
The NFL says its stance on sports betting, which is in line with other major American sports leagues, has changed with the changing legal landscape and that working with gambling operators allows it to better protect the integrity of the game. As with many positions the NFL takes, however, the results are magnified by the league’s cultural influence. More than just responding to the landscape, the NFL helps shape it.
Americans will bet more than $115 billion legally on sports by 2023, according to the American Gaming Association, the national trade group for the gaming industry. Nearly 25 million more Americans bet on sports last year than in 2018, the group said, and the number of states where sports betting is legal will reach 38 this year.
While the numbers for the NFL are harder to break down because they don’t report every state by sport or league, the gaming association was cited in a market analysis by investment firm Citizens JMP Securities. The report predicted that about $1.5 billion would be legally bet on next Sunday’s Super Bowl, more than 1 percent of the money legally wagered on all sports last year.
There is little evidence that the legalization of sports gambling has increased addictive behavior. But those watching the effects of gambling have concerns. The National Council on Problem Gambling said its survey data indicated an increased risk of problem gambling for American adults in the three years since the federal ban on sports betting was lifted.
Dr. Marc Potenza, a psychiatrist and director of the Yale Center for Gambling Excellence, described “a perfect storm” that could lead some people to develop a gambling problem. He cited factors such as the relaxation of regulations, the accessibility of mobile betting, heavy advertising and free time spent on sports. Particularly vulnerable are young men who place a high value on sport, Dr Potenza said.
In 2021, the year the NFL struck deals with its three sportsbook partners, it gave the National Council on Problem Gambling a three-year, $6.2 million grant that was used in part to modernize the help line that appears at the bottom of betting ads. The league’s contribution is a small fraction of what gaming companies pay to be part of the NFL’s marketing machine, but it is the largest grant in the council’s history and exceeded the nonprofit’s total grant over the previous four years. according to tax returns.
“We’re in it now — we’re in this business,” said Anna Isaacson, the NFL’s senior vice president of social responsibility. “What can we do to make sure we don’t cause undue additional harm?”
However, the league’s approach to in-game gambling violations remains punitive. For decades, sports leagues believed that gambling could harm the integrity of results—with concerns about a player throwing a game because of a bet, for example—so the focus was on enforcement and punishment over prevention and Treatment.
The NFL prohibits league and team personnel from betting on any sport, while players are permitted to bet on non-NFL sports as long as they do not do so on team facilities or while on team or league business. While in Las Vegas for the Super Bowl, members of the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers and hundreds of league employees, many staying at Caesars Palace, are not allowed to play casino games and can only enter a sports book if pass to another part of the hotel.
The NFL said it trains 17,000 people about its policy annually, and last year, amid a flurry of player suspensions, league officials began visiting teams to lead in-person workouts with players. Players who are suspended for at least a full season are being told that counseling is one of the factors the league will consider when applying for reinstatement, and the league said it shared responsible gambling resources during its practices.
The NFL has not disclosed the number of league-wide employees disciplined under its gambling policy. The league had gone decades without a gambling violation before the Supreme Court ruling, but 10 players were fined this season, including seven who faced season-long suspensions for betting on NFL games. In September, the league increased penalties for players who bet on their own teams and reduced them for first-time offenders who bet on other sports while on the job.
Two former NFL employees fired in the past two years for violating the policy said in interviews that they were not offered the opportunity to undergo rehabilitation and return to their jobs, as is often the case with league employees struggling with issues such as abuse. substances. The former employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of professional repercussions, said they were fired without severance or benefits.
One said the person was fired for betting less than $1,000 on the NFL and other sports four years earlier through a company that is now a league partner. The New York Times confirmed the details by reviewing a file of the former employee’s account with the company. The other employee said a major concern for the league appears to be the possibility of any debt being used as leverage against the employee.
Asked for comment on the layoffs, the NFL said in a statement: “We take any threats to the integrity of the game seriously, and violations of our gambling policy may result in the termination of staff, who receive extensive training and other resources to help comply with the policy.”
David Highhill, who was named the NFL’s general manager of sports betting in 2022, said the top priority in drafting and implementing the league’s gambling policy was to preserve the integrity of the game.
NFL audiences, however, see a steady stream of ads from betting companies. In response to fan outrage when ads from FanDuel and DraftKings for so-called fantasy football — in which fans pick their own teams of NFL players — saturated game broadcasts in 2015, the league limited the number of sports betting ads to six per broadcast when it starts accepting them in 2021.
But more Americans saw sports betting ads during NFL games than during any other national television program over the past three years, according to data from iSpot, a TV metrics company. Three betting ads will air during this year’s Super Bowl broadcast, Mr. Highhill said.
Throughout the week leading up to next Sunday’s game, the business ties between the NFL and bookies will be on full display in Las Vegas. It’s a booming business for the league, but it worries those who have long fought to keep gambling out of professional sports.
“They would argue that they think it can now be controlled,” said former Sen. Bill Bradley, a retired professional basketball player and a driving force behind the overturned 1992 law that effectively banned sports betting, referring to the NFL and other leagues. “And I just don’t think it’s going to be checked. I think it will permeate the culture.”
