The NFL Players Association said it had concerns about the NFL’s ability to protect the integrity of the game following the expansion of sports betting.
In an exclusive interview, NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith told ESPN that the league has not taken the steps he believes are needed to protect the integrity of the game. He points to league policies allowing team owners to have investments in bookmakers, plans to monetize game and player data without thorough discussions with all stakeholders, and even the NFL’s approach to fantasy football as troublesome issues as more legal sportsbooks begin to pop up, including in states with franchises.
“After the league’s testimony [Thursday], I actually have more concerns about their ability to ensure the integrity of the game than ever,” Smith said.
Delaware reported almost $17 million in sports betting activity during the first month of football season.
The state saw $16,830,010 in wagers for the period from Aug. 27 through Sept. 30, according to the latest numbers from the lottery.
The last period in Delaware was just $7.7 million in wagers. (The comparison is not apples to apples, as it covered fewer days, July 29 through Aug. 26.)
The average daily handle was $481,000 a day, up from $276,000 a day in August. That’s the obvious effect of football season, which is the most popular betting sport for Americans.
Operators generated $3.15 million in revenue for the period ending Sept. 30.
Facial recognition cameras may have been looking for “courtsiders” during the U.S. Open a month ago.
A few spectators for the US Open finals in New York’s Flushing Meadows last month probably weren’t smiling for the cameras.
Why not?
Because facial recognition cameras may have been scanning the seats looking for people transmitting real-time betting data to far-flung international locations, according to a disclosure earlier this year by the United States Tennis Association (USTA), the organization that runs the U.S. Open.
The USTA is “[e]xploring opportunities to utilize facial recognition software to identify known courtsiders at the U.S. Open,” wrote the USTA in an April report about tennis integrity and gambling corruption.
The Washington Post published a feature article exploring how sports betting could change the experience of sports in America.
Leonsis’s vision is particularly grand and notably progressive.
He thinks his 20-year-old arena in Chinatown, the home of the Wizards and Capitals, in addition to one of his Arena Football League teams, will be transformed in the near future to an entertainment super-plex of sorts, buzzing with life and action.
The arena will open in the morning and attract crowds during the lunch hour, happy hour and every hour in between. The allure: sports betting. Televisions and betting windows will abound. “Screens everywhere,” Leonsis says. The area around the arena and in many spaces inside the building will resemble high-tech sportsbooks, the kind found in high-end, Las Vegas-style casinos. There will be betting windows and sporting events from all over the world being broadcast on walls of television screens.
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Each Friday, we’ll comb through as many articles, tweets and podcasts as we can find related to the world of sports betting and daily fantasy sports, and publish the good stuff here.
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