Posted on 04/02/2017 10:28:30 PM PDT by TBP
The gambling industry here and football have been seeing each other secretly since the 1960s. But Monday’s 31-to-1 vote by league owners to permit the Oakland Raiders to move to Las Vegas with (for now) no stipulations about sports betting is a sign that the league’s and city’s status has changed from “it’s complicated” to “in a relationship.”
The reason? Las Vegas has been sanitized a bit, and the National Football League isn’t as clean-cut as it once appeared.
So what changed before Monday’s vote?
Las Vegas is no longer a desert oasis dominated by gambling; it’s a major metropolitan area of more than 2 million people, and even its gambling business is no longer all about gaming. The major resorts of the Strip have made more from rooms, food and shows than their casinos since 1999. Today, those resorts make just over a third of their income from gambling. More significantly, in 2016, for the first time even downtown Las Vegas’s gambling halls, always more focused on down-and-dirty gambling than the ritzy Strip, made more from non-gambling than gambling. So because Las Vegas no longer means gambling, the city is acceptable. (Of course, $750 million in public funds for a stadium would go a long way toward making any city acceptable, but that’s another story.)
The impressionable public no longer needs to be shielded from cynicism and theories that blame adverse results on hidden conspiracies. In the era of alternative facts and fake news, no one’s running to the government for help because they lost a football bet. And the game itself — marred by steroids, concussions and all the collateral damage of any global business dependent on the athletic feats of a few hundred competitors — is no longer viewed as pure.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
you beat me to it... expect a lot of corruption scandals in the future dealing with point shaving in the NFL.
Didn't know they took IOUs.
Just follow the money.
Has it ever occurred to you there are phones that can be used for that purpose? Exactly how close was a casino to Pete Rose?
Nowadays, Las Vegas doesn't mean much when it comes to corrupting a player. That can happen anywhere. I wouldn't fret about it.
I agree but the willingness to move to Vegas just tells me where the sport is today....we have become one big corrupt cesspool in the last 30 years. and I am not talking just sports I mean everything.
Why? The same reason Disney stopped making wholesome family friendly movies.
Vegas made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Plus, have you seen Oakland?
I hadn’t visited Las Vegas for more than twenty years until a couple of years ago.
After driving in rush hour traffic for five minutes my first comment to my wife was—you mean this city isn’t big enough to have a major league baseball and football team?
Sports have been corrupt and corruptible for a long time—think Blacksox scandal. The NFL spends big bucks to hide their many scandals—just because we don’t hear about it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
P.S. I won’t be going back to Las Vegas—Laughlin is the laid-back version of Vegas I can handle. :-)
Probably no more than usual. I think they are signaling that things are getting bad in California.
If you watched last year’s Super Bowl, then you have your answer. Fake!
Do consider that they are in Oakland right now. Think I’d rather be in Nevada than Cali, especially if they pay to build a stadium.
The NFL has no soul to sell.
Between gambling, wife beating, accused and convicted murders, performance enhancing drugs, recreational drugs, teams cheating (Insert all Patriots accusations here.), rapists, attempt rapists, gay promoting PR stunts, fleecing cities across America to the tune of billions of dollars, covering up concussion issues both short and long term, doctors abusing every medical ethical pain killing standard and the general thugish nature of the player base in the public eye....
Um....
WHAT SOUL IS LEFT TO SELL?????
Satan collected on it already.
Every time the Raiders fail to cover the spread because of a missed extra point, someone is going to get hurt.
“e but the willingness to move to Vegas just tells me where the sport is today....we have become one big corrupt cesspool in the last 30 years.”
When an NFL city refuses to pony up money for a new stadium i.e., Oakland, San Diego, what’s wrong with shopping around for a better deal?
The NFL sold its soul when it became a subsidiary of Nike.
After the Kaepernick crapola this last season gambling and winning was the only fun takeaway from the season. Other than than Brady's amazing superbowl win.
As a cynical friend told me once, professional sports is like professional sex. There's no love involved and it's all about the money.
As a cynical friend told me once, professional sports is like professional sex. There's no love involved and it's all about the money.
As a cynical friend told me once, professional sports is like professional sex. There's no love involved and it's all about the money.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.