The commissioner of the National Football League said that he is still opposed to the notion of legalized sportsbetting in the United States, this despite the league approving a team to be based out of Las Vegas earlier this week.
Commissioner Roger Goodell said that he believes sportsbetting regulation could threaten the integrity of the sport and noted that he supports the current status of federal sportsbetting laws, which restrict sportsbetting to just a handful of states. Ironically, the league just approved the move of the Raiders to Las Vegas this week, which is in one of the few states that has legal sportsbetting.
Speaking to the media about the matter at the NFL owners meetings, Goodell said, "I think we still strongly oppose legalized sports gambling. The integrity of our game is No.1; we will not compromise on that."
"That is a major risk for us; I think we have to make sure that we continue to stay focused on making sure that everyone has full confidence that what you see on the field is not influenced by any outside factors."
Comments
Oh...sports gambling. From one side its good, fun thing and makes to watch sport with much more interest. But on another hand, when you bet every time and stopped betting you find out that watching sports isnt such fun thing anymore....
I understand NFL concerns but I think this is just over-exaggerated, I mean their fears. in the end fantasy leagues been on the market for years and that doesn't effect the sport in a negative way so I don't think with team paying in Vegas where the sports betting is legal would have any influence over the sport too.
I just think it's stupid. A lot of the rest of the world has legalized sportsbetting and it's not been the end of humanity that they think it will be here. Sure, there's problems that pop up every once in a while, but the benefits far outweigh the risk as far as I'm concerned.
sharpe
Fully agree with you slim, their main concern is there could be some match fixing and in any sport this usually happens at lower levels not in a top flight and it's even ridiculous to talk about that in NFL.