Consider This from NPR - Sports Betting And The NFL Are Profitable Partners, But Controversies Continue

Episode Date: September 10, 2023

The National Football League's regular season is finally underway. And for loyal fans who have been devouring all the news of their favorite teams, it couldn't have come soon enough.But even if you're just a casual viewer of football, or really any network television program, you've probably seen the star-studded ads for a related business: sports betting.The league's partnership with major sports betting sites continues to draw criticism. Ten NFL players have been suspended for gambling violations since April, leaving critics and fans wondering if the relationship between football and gambling will harm the integrity of the game.Host Nathan Rott speaks with David Purdum who covers the gambling industry for ESPN.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. Football is back. The National Football League season officially kicked off on Thursday, meaning for fans like me, Sundays from now until February are going to be filled with America's most popular sport. But even if you're just a casual viewer of football or really any network television program, you've probably noticed an explosion of advertising for a related business, sports betting. You want to make every game interesting? Step one, open the BetMGM sports book.

$200 instantly, just for betting five bucks. Drive Kings, listen to me. The more you put it on my app, the more you earn with Caesar Rewards. Check it out. I'm going full Caesar. Let's go. The ads are pretty hard to miss. After decades of distancing itself from sports betting,

the NFL is now going all in and embracing the multi-billion dollar gaming industry. Heck, even the Super Bowl is going to be played in Las Vegas at the end of this season. And for the NFL, it really does mark a huge change, a change that's come in the wake of a 2018 decision by the nation's highest court. By a 6-3 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court threw open the door today to sports betting. It ruled... Justices said a 1992 federal law that banned all but a handful of states from having sports betting violated states' rights. Now the league has officially partnered with DraftKings, FanDuel, and Caesars Entertainment, all major betting sites.

As long as their state allows it, that means football fans can now bet on everything from how many yards a quarterback throws for in a given game to who catches the first touchdown. Again, as long as it's legal in your state. This was a league that was staunchly against gambling. And then literally when money got thrown in their face, they completely hit a 180 and was like, give us all the money. Karan Phillips writes for the sports site Deadspin. He says the ramifications of gambling sets up a serious dilemma for the league. Well, the NFL has suspended an suspended for gambling violations since April. Consider this.

Legalized sports betting is now legal in 34 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. And the NFL didn't waste a second teaming up with some of the biggest names in the industry. Will the NFL's financial and cultural gamble backfire? Any time an illicit activity such as sports betting is brought aboard, brought into the regulated environment, society struggles with it in the first early years. They try to figure out, well, what can I do? What can I not do? What's against the rules? What's allowed? From NPR, I'm Nate Rutt. It's Sunday, September 10th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the WISE app today, or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Lemelson Foundation, dedicated to improving lives through invention, innovation, and climate action. It's Consider This from NPR. ESPN's David Purdom was covering the gambling industry long before the 2018 Supreme Court ruling. And full

disclosure, sports betting companies do sponsor and advertise on ESPN. But since that ruling, the sports betting industry looks very different. And in some ways, so does the NFL. We called them up to talk about it. How did that ruling change the relationship between sports and betting? Changed it a lot. It has been really an overwhelming change and quickly. Before the ruling, you know, they were fighting to keep sports betting basically restricted to Nevada, at least the legal version of it. They fought it all the way to the Supreme Court. They lost. As soon as that decision comes down, boy, they've done the 180 pivots on their stance on sports betting, embracing in a lot of ways, partnering with sports books. You're now seeing odds and lines and point

spreads infused into media coverage where they used to be kind of pushed back towards the back and kind of kept in the shadows. But now I always think sports betting right now is more in our face than it ever has been in the history of the U.S. So explain for me, why was the league pushing back? Why was it fighting against, you know, a broadening of sports betting? Well, the league stance was that a broadening of sports betting, legalized sports betting would threaten the integrity of the games. They thought that it might lead to more attempts at fixing compromising games for gambling purposes. There's also a theory out there that that was kind of a facade and they were just more trying to figure out the best way to position themselves

before this inevitably happened. So the leagues were fighting it. At the same time, they were trying to figure out, okay, when this happens, how can we be in the best position to capitalize and monitor everything, the betting on the games? Okay, so 2018 Supreme Court says, hey, yeah, states, you can now allow sports betting. Can you walk us through the kind of about face that the NFL has had on sports betting since then? It's amazing. It's a complete 180. They were talked about how the legalization of sports betting just in New Jersey would irreparably harm the integrity of the league. And now they've embraced it. They have multiple sports book partners, MGM, Caesars, FanDuel, DraftKings.

There's also sportsbooks inside NFL stadiums now and they will be allowed to be open for the first time on game days this year. Washington has one. I believe the Bears are looking at putting one. There's one at Wrigley Field when you kind of gravitate over into Major League Baseball. There's a sportsbook at the Arizona Cardinals Stadium. It is pretty crazy how quickly that they have switched their position

on this and embraced it. And Dave, maybe you can clarify for me, you know, these partnerships that the NFL has made with some of these betting companies, do they get paid for having the outlets in these stadiums and for giving them stats? I mean, how does that work? Yeah, there's different systems of how it's put together and very transparency of the contracts has not been there. We haven't seen exactly. My understanding is someone is just a vendor, just like a rental thing. They rent the property and then they pay a rent to them. So that's how at least some of them work. Other parts of the deals where they're going to get some sort of cut from the amount wagered on the games,

right? You know, when it gets a very small percentage, a lot of times that comes down to the data. Maybe suddenly the contract says, okay, we'll allow you to have our license here in Virginia. And some sports leagues have been granted, sports franchise have been granted betting license. And then they kind of partner out with a, with a FanDuel or a DraftKings. And sometimes in those ranges, my understanding is that it could be, okay, you partner, you've got to buy our data and use that to fuel your sports books. And that's another way they monetize it. So what is the motivation for the league here? I mean, do they gain anything besides money? And is there something they're losing here too?

Well, money is the number one thing. Everything will always lead back to money. How can we make the most money? And they do it through fan engagement. There's been studies in the past where if a point spread is in play in a blowout game, the ratings are a little bit better. Fans will stick around longer when the point spread is in play. So ratings are the big one that they're trying to go through and the marketing from it. Yeah, if you've got money on the line, you're going to pay more attention to a game, right?

Correct. All right, so I want to step back. ESPN and other outlets have reported about the confusion amongst NFL players and coaches about the league's gambling rules as they apply to players, right? I think I'm a big Denver Broncos fan, and our new head coach, Sean Payton, was quoted earlier this offseason saying that even he was more confused about reading the league sports betting guidelines when they came out. What's making this so difficult? The confusion stems from where the bets can be placed. So the athletes, the players in the NFL, they have an exemption where they are allowed to bet with legal operators on anything except for the NFL. Okay, so any other like basketball, tennis, you know, you name it.

NBA, baseball, tennis, whatever, long as it's not related to the NFL. Where the confusion, a lot of these players got tied up. You're not allowed to place the bets while you're at works. And that includes if you're on a trip for a road game in the hotel, wherever, if you're on that trip with them, you're considered at work and you're not allowed to bet. And a lot of normal corporations probably have similar things. They don't want you sitting around betting, gambling while you're at work. And that's where a lot of the guys got tripped up. And I can understand that. I do not understand there to be any confusion on anyone that thinks that it's okay for them to be betting on the NFL when they're playing in the NFL. And there has been a handful of those guys who have done that and they have

lost a whole year of their career. So 34 U.S. states, D.C. now allow sports betting. Should we expect to see more states legalize this in the coming years? Yeah, we're going to get Kentucky here at the start of football season. That will add it on. The big states are still out there though, right? California and Texas both have taken serious looks at it. It's very complicated in those states and the casino industry. There's tribal gaming interests that are very powerful in California. So it's going to take a while. But if you think how big the market has grown, there's already been $ billion billion with a B dollars wagered with U.S. sports books since that Supreme Court decision. So we've already had that and we

don't even have California and Texas on board. This market is going to only continue to grow. That was ESPN staff writer David Purdom. We reached out to the NFL for comment and have not yet heard back. The American Gaming Association says that 73.5 million American adults, that's 28% of all American adults, plan to bet on the NFL this season. When you see how much money is out there and available, from a business standpoint, it makes sense for them to change because you just can't turn down that much money. But at some point, you would think that there were certain things the league just wouldn't sign up for.

Karin Phillips writes for Deadspin. We heard from him earlier. He acknowledges that the NFL is all about the money. But in this case, with what seems to be so many conflicts of interest between the league and sportsbooks, there may be more at stake than just money. You have a league that is involved in sports betting and has partnerships with it, as you see on different sites or networks or TV shows, that it is now part of the culture and part of watching the NFL. But yet you're seeing these very harsh penalty when it comes to the players. So for most people, they're kind of like, hey, how can you as a league be involved in this? In Phillips' opinion, bigger scandals are inevitable.

Fixing games is going to happen at some point. There's literally too much money being made to where we're going to have some type of scandal. We literally saw it in the NBA in the 2000s with the Tim Donahue scandal. The NBA basically got rid of Tim Donahue and said he was a lone wolf. I was born at night, but I was not born last night. If you believe that Tim Donahue was the only one doing that as a NBA referee, and there weren't any other referees who knew about it or were involved, you're absolutely crazy. And at some point, if it happened in the NBA, someone in the NFL, a player, a coach, a referee, someone in the front office is trying to figure out to do what Tim Donahue did in the NBA,

but better and learn from Tim Donahue's mistakes. Phillips says this explains the heavy penalties that the NFL has been imposing on NFL players caught gambling. The league has put themselves in a position where they have to be, you know, the old saying, judge, you're an executioner with this, because they don't have a choice. Because if any of the things were to happen that I think will happen, it could be a death blow to that league. Now, the NFL has proven that it is Teflon and too big to fail. But if there is one thing that was ever going to bring the NFL down a peg

or it will lose some of its luster, it would be a gambling rig, a sports betting rig with players or coaches or front office members. Phillips says that while the many scandals surrounding the NFL enrage him, examples of racism, sexism, violence off the field, he will be joining the hundred million or so fans for another season of football and he summed things up this way. This is the devil we know but the devil ain't going nowhere so you just got to get used to it. As a football fan I can relate. That was Karin Phillips, senior writer for Deadspin.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Nate Rott. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation, working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems. More information is at waltonfamilyfoundation.org.