The NFL And Players Gambling: Reading Between The Lines
The NFL recently suspended five players for betting on sports, the fourth time the pro football league has dealt with this issue in recent years.
Three of those players were indefinitely suspended for betting on NFL games themselves; ESPN also reported that staff members on the Detroit Lions were let go related to gambling policy violations.
The fact that we’re seeing a lot of suspensions of NFL players in the era of legal sports betting brings up a lot of questions.
Why are we seeing so many suspensions in the NFL?
Let’s start here: It’s good that NFL players that are gambling on NFL games are being caught, full stop. The NFL is taking the issue seriously, and the mechanisms in place are working to find the behavior after the fact, at least.
But, it’s still a crazy trend, when we consider:
The other major North American leagues, outside of the UFC, haven’t had any similar issues.
The repercussions of gambling on NFL games were brought into focus with the Calvin Ridley suspension.
In recent years, the NFL has reportedly put a ton of effort into educating players about rules around sports betting.
In sum, it doesn’t make sense.
The first point can be explained over small sample sizes that the NFL has more players and staffers than other sports. But still, there have been no player suspensions over the same timeframe from the NBA, Major League Baseball and the NHL. (One could wonder if these leagues just haven’t caught the behavior.)
It comes off the rails with the second and third points. It’s hard to believe the players in the latest wave of suspensions didn’t know that they would be suspended for at least a year if they bet on NFL games. And we know the NFL has put an emphasis on this.
Do players just think no one is going to catch them? That almost has to be the case, even though the risk/reward proposition would in theory dissuade such behavior.
Do players need to be stopped before they bet?
This is where things logically head next, one would think. Education and negative outcomes aren’t stopping players in the NFL, at least.
It makes sense that leagues would like to stop these bets from happening and then turn into suspensions. The NFL (and other leagues) are likely lucky there hasn’t be a worse story from an integrity standpoint. Especially when the leagues continually tell us how important integrity is to them.
It seems like we are on the way to making this possible throughout the ecosystem if the Prohibet product comes to market.
Anyway, it remains wild that pro players are willing to risk their profession to gamble on games. And education and stringent penalties don’t seem like they serve as enough of a deterrent.