NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told CNBC last week that fantasy football wasn’t about wagering and was instead about family togetherness. He told a touching story about a father re-connecting with his distant daughter through fantasy football.
Everyone chuckled, before returning to reality in time to reload their daily fantasy accounts to bet on the Super Bowl. Goodell, meanwhile, went back to looking into expanding to London, where legal betting on the NFL skyrockets at UK sports books when games are played at Wembley Stadium.
The NFL and other American professional sports leagues’ public stance on sports betting has become a tired shtick, filled with hypocrisy and insincerity. In deposition testimony in the New Jersey sports betting case, NFL Labor Relations Counsel Lawrence Feranzi Jr. said he wasn’t aware some fans played fantasy football for money. Retiring MLB Commissioner Bud Selig testified that he “doesn’t know if fans are betting on baseball.” Roughly $700 million was bet on baseball at Nevada sports books in 2013, according to Gaming Control revenue numbers.
Retiring NBA commissioner David Stern has acknowledged publicly multiple times that sports betting may be a part of the league’s future. In November, he told WFAN New York that he believes sports betting will be legal in all 50 states “in the near future.” In 2009, when asked by Sports Illustrated if it is in the best interest of the NBA to seek legalization of sports betting, Stern said, “It has been a matter of league policy to answer that question, ‘No.’ But I think that league policy was formulated at a time when gambling was far less wide spread – even legally.”
But Stern also has scolded New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for following voters’ wishes and pursuing sports betting to help his state’s struggling horse racing and casino industries.
“The one thing I’m certain of is New Jersey has no idea what it’s doing,” said Stern during deposition testimony in 2012.
Currently, New Jersey is prepping to take its case to the U.S. Supreme Court. It will be the final step of a two-year legal battle between New Jersey and the NCAA and professional sports leagues. The fight is centered on states’ rights and the constitutionality of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), a 20-year-old federal statute that bans sports betting in all but four states (Nevada, Delaware, Oregon and Montana).
Sen. Ray Lesniak says the state’s legal team, led by former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, is preparing its petition to the Supreme Court to hear the case. The petition is due in late February. Legal experts estimate the Supreme Court accepts only one percent of all the cases it is presented.
“However, once they take the case, they overturn 60 percent,” Lesniak pointed out during a recent phone interview. “The odds are against us, but if you’re not in it, you can’t win it. And New Jersey is in it.”
A 37-year veteran of the New Jersey legislature, Lesniak has been at the forefront of New Jersey’s fight to bring Las Vegas-style sports betting to its casinos and race tracks. He was in the thick of the politics when New Jersey failed to take advantage of an offer to legalize sports betting before PASPA was signed into law in 1992.
Lesniak visited with BettingTalk.com’s David Purdum this week to discuss what he’s learned from the sports betting case and what’s next.
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What have you taken away or learned about the sports leagues and their commissioners during the sports betting fight?
Lesniak: What’s easy to discern is that they have their heads in the sand. They know they are not being honest and truthful. They’re playing out the string, until they can get a piece of the action from sports betting.
The leagues continually argue that they will sustain irreparable harm from expanded legalized sports betting in the U.S. But most industry experts don’t buy that argument, and in some cases, it doesn’t even feel like the leagues believe it. Ultimately, what is the reason the sports leagues don’t want sports betting?
Lesniak: It’s hard to buy that argument (irreparable harm), when they just added another NFL game at Wembley Stadium, where people are betting right across the street.
Look, until the NFL feels that it can profit from it, they’ll be opposed to it. I believe we could cut a deal with the NFL and the sports leagues tomorrow to give them some kind of franchise fee for using their official statistics. Problem is that, though, we’d have to get an act through Congress to do that. And they (sports leagues) are not going to openly support that. And that’s just not going to happen. The only game we have to play right now is with the U.S. Supreme Court.
(The NFL has denied any interest in revenue from sports betting).
Do you believe Gov. Christie’s political hit from the bridge scandal will hurt the chances that the Supreme Court takes the case?
Lesniak: Not at all. The Supreme Court couldn’t care less about Chris Christie’s political ambitions and his scandals. Although I would say, a victory here would give him a big boost in popularity, which he certainly needs right now.
There are some parallels to marijuana legalization and sports betting legalization in terms of states’ rights. What has been your reaction to the federal government’s apparent acceptance of marijuana legalization?
Lesniak: It’s contradictory. Colorado and Washington are openly violating an archaic federal law. The Justice Department is standing on the sidelines, as I believe they should, allowing the states to make their own decisions to the best interest of the residents. I don’t know why they haven’t taken that same position with sports betting, except for the fact that the NFL and sports leagues are very, very powerful entities and have a lot of influence at all levels of government.
The New Jersey Devils of the NHL and the Philadelphia 76ers of the NBA recently signed a sponsorship deal with an online gambling company, bwin.party digital entertainment, which runs a sports book out of Gibraltar. Do you believe there is some dissension among the sports leagues when it comes to sports betting?
Lesniak: There’s no doubt about it. There’s been dissension for years, but it’s just been stifled. When David Stern said legalized sports betting was inevitable, he got slapped down real fast by the NFL and others. He had to backtrack real fast on that.
As a 37-year veteran of the New Jersey legislature, are you surprised there is not legal sports betting in your state by now?
Lesniak: I’m disappointed. I had a high level of confidence that we would win at the court of appeals. I didn’t expect us to win at the district court level. It’s rare that a district court judge would overturn such a longstanding act of Congress, which has such powerful interests behind it. But I thought we’d get more than one out of the three court of appeals judges on the panel that heard the case. And I was confident that the court of appeals would take the case again since there was one dissenting opinion and that we’d win there. It has been disappointing. I am disappointed in Congress, including the New Jersey Congressional Delegation, that it has not had any interest in legalizing sports betting on the behalf of the people of the state of New Jersey and indeed the country at large.