When the National Hockey League finalized plans to expand with a Las Vegas franchise and the Oakland Raiders got approval to move to Las Vegas, many thought the changing environment signaled a softening of the opposition among professional sports franchises to casino gambling, and legalize sports betting in particular.
The creation of the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights was only one of several clues that professional leagues were softening on the sports-betting issue. National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver came out and said it’s time to re-examine the U.S. federal ban on sports betting. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, though not reversing his former opposition to legal sports betting, has not, as many feared, pushed for a ban on wagering on the Golden Knights at regulated Nevada sports books.
Last week, it became clear that the National Football League will not restrict betting on the Raiders after the team moves to the gaming capital in two years. However, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell last week reiterated his opposition to legalized sports betting, even immediately after 31 of the 32 NFL owners voted to approve the Raiders’ move to Las Vegas.
“We still strongly oppose legalized gambling,” he said after the vote, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We will not compromise on the integrity of our game.
“But you also have the regulatory of gambling there, which actually will be beneficial.”
Longtime Las Vegas bookmaker Jimmy Vaccaro, in an interview with Turner Sports Network’s Bleacher Report, expressed amusement at Goodell’s stance. “For someone who was so against (sports gambling), it’s clear that he works for the owners,” he said of Goodell, “and 31 of the 32 owners thought it was a very good idea to go to Las Vegas. With that, listening to some of his statements in the past few days once the vote was in, I found it funny.
“He was acting like a Georgia mule, just backing up on everything he was saying in years prior.”
Chris Andrews, a bookmaker for South Point Race and Sports Book, told the TSN report that Goodell’s “integrity” comments do not match up with the facts, noting that protections in place such as the auditing of every transaction and payment make Las Vegas the safest place in the world to bet on sports.
Andrews compared Goodell’s comments on sports betting to the denials from the NFL related to the concussion issue. “I think he’s acting very lawyerly, similar to the concussion case,” he said. “They had a mountain of evidence that at least something was going on, but they denied it all the way. It was just a lawyer strategy. I think it’s the same here.
“(Former NFL Commissioner Pete) Rozelle started the fear of gambling, and it probably wasn’t irrational at the time, but the world has really changed since then.”
On the other hand, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred is easing up on his opposition to the wager. Appearing on the Mike & Mike radio show on ESPN Radio, Manfred seemed to support the position of Silver, who broke the professional sports league’s opposition to the wager last year when he penned an op-ed in the New York Times suggesting it might be time to consider legalizing sports betting.
“I think Adam has done a nice job of making people aware that the landscape on sports gambling is changing around us, has changed dramatically,” Manfred said. “And in part in response to his comments but in response to just general developments in the area, we’ve begun a conversation with the owners. It’s educational at the beginning, in the sense in that sports gambling has changed a lot. I mean, you know the old division of betting illegally with a bookie somewhere is not today’s world.
“We’ve begun a conversation educating people about what’s out there, what sports leagues in other countries have done, in an effort to make sure Major League Baseball is ready to join in what I think is going to be a dialogue about how sports gambling regulation in the United States should be changed.”
Manfred also said Las Vegas could not be ruled out as a location for a MLB team simply because you can wager on sports in the city.
Proponents of lifting the federal sports betting ban also can now argue Goodell and the NFL that the people who pay their salaries think sports betting should be legal. According to a new poll released by the American Gaming Association, the fan bases of 30 of the National Football League’s 32 teams support changing federal law to allow individual states to decide for themselves on the question of legalized sports betting.
The poll, conducted by Morning Consult, surveyed more than 45,000 NFL fans on their views toward sports betting as a public policy issue and broke down the numbers by market. “Cardinals fans overwhelmingly recognize the federal ban on sports betting has failed, said Geoff Freeman, president and CEO of the AGA. “They support lifting the federal ban on sports betting because they believe a legalized, regulated market will generate vital tax revenue, increase fan interest in games and make betting safe for consumers.”
Meanwhile, the AGA used the start of the Major League Baseball season last week as a reminder of the extent of illegal wagering in the U.S., despite the ban imposed by the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), the law banning sports betting in all but four states that the AGA has been fighting to repeal.
In a press release, the AGA estimated that American sports fans will wager $36.5 billion on Major League Baseball this season, with 97 percent of those wagers—$35.4 billion—to be made illegally.
“The amount wagered illegally on professional baseball is another sign the federal ban on sports betting has become an utter failure,” said Geoff Freeman, AGA president and CEO. “It’s time for Washington to stop depriving states of critical tax revenue and allow them to reap the rewards of a regulated market.”
