Bernstein: Let's Really Talk NFL And Gambling
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) Oh my heavens, the scandal!
Here we are, at our collective "Casablanca" moment as football fans – Captain Renault walking into Rick's and announcing he's "shocked ... shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" even as he's handed his own winnings.
The daily fantasy sports (DFS) issue at hand can be the beginning of a new honesty and openness about the happy, multibillion-dollar marriage between professional football and gambling, and it should spur discussion about realistic public policy that's best for all concerned.
News of a DraftKings employee using insider data to help him win $350,000 on rival site FanDuel has the NFL nervous, politicians in full bluster and harrumph and media partners scrambling for guidance on how to handle the aftermath. It's unfolding as we speak, with congressional committees, federal agencies and the New York attorney general snapping to action in an effort to retroactively govern an industry that has grown fast enough to outstrip the law.
This story feels so big right now because of the speed at which the two main companies have integrated themselves into sports consumption of any kind, their branding ubiquitous on TV and radio, on all our devices and in arenas.
This football season, the NFL is DFS.
It's not just the ads, either. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and Patriots owner Robert Kraft also have stakes in DraftKings, and the company is officially partnered with the players' union for licensed marketing. It's legal and valuable and taking off like a rocket, so plenty of smart money is involved.
The current issue will certainly tap the brakes a bit, but the upcoming debates and discussions could also provide opportunity for the not-so-unintended consequence of opening the scope of how we classify legal gambling.
As of now, DFS is defined as game of skill and not chance, exempting it from myriad prohibitions at the state and national levels. So rather than equate it to sports betting, it's more like playing the stock market – there's risk involved, but more aware and informed investors can simply prove to be better at it than others. The DraftKings employee using proprietary information would be guilty of insider trading, but there's no equivalent to the Securities and Exchange Commission in place yet to police that kind of thing.
Perhaps there will be soon, but any reactive regulation of DFS should only be as part of a full legalization of sports betting.
Enough with the lying and the pretense by both the NFL and government. We all know exactly what's going on, but nobody seems to have the courage to confront it. It's an easy argument that picking winners against the spread, over/unders and in all kinds of exotic propositional bets is every bit the skill as the definition is arbitrarily applied to DFS. Sports gambling is clearly mainstream, and the tension of the moment exists almost entirely because of the laughable dissonance based on flimsy linguistics.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver argued lucidly for legalization last year in the New York Times.
"There is an obvious appetite among sports fans for a safe and legal way to wager on professional sporting events," he wrote. "Outside of the United States, sports betting and other forms of gambling are popular, widely legal and subject to regulation. Congress should adopt a federal framework that allows states to authorize betting on professional sports, subject to strict regulatory requirements and technological safeguards."
Silver concluded by saying, "I believe that sports betting should be brought out of the underground and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated."
Not to mention, taxed.
Silver estimated the yearly amount wagered each year on sports at $400 billion, and we know that the NFL's own share of that number would be the plurality, if not the majority. Consider the boon to communities under budgetary stress afforded by a thin fraction of that money directed to them. As states and cities race to build casinos and advertise lotteries as they scramble to fund pensions and maintain needed social programs, the answer is right in front of them.
Instead, we enrich offshore bookmakers and the guys running parlay cards at the corner tavern. It makes no more sense than it did when we outlawed alcohol sales, only to empower gangsters.
The DraftKings/FanDuel examination is our latest, best possibility to invite more practicality and fairness about sports gambling in general, instead of cleaving to the kind of antiquated moralism that has proved ineffective as policy.
This is an important chance, to which we need to apply our skill.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. Follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.