Legalized Gambling Will Destroy College and Professional Sports, Part 9
A world-class prediction: Vindicated
Reprinted from Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer (Third Edition, pp 595-599), as well as “The NFL and the Mafia, Part 12.”
In my 1989 book, Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football, I predicted that the time would come when the NFL owners would offer a wholly-owned process for gambling on NFL games, even going as far as to host gambling operations in their stadiums.
One of my top law-enforcement sources, Ralph Salerno, the former supervisor of detectives for the New York Police Department, favored legalizing sports gambling and told me: “[Former NFL Commissioner] Pete Rozelle [had] always been violently against sports betting. That is going to continue until the owners decide that they want some of the income and will take the bets at the stadium or elsewhere. The TV money isn’t going to pay for everything forever. They’re going to be looking for additional revenue.”
Speaking about legalizing sports gambling and how the NFL, one day, would embrace it, Gene Klein, the former owner of the San Diego Chargers, remarked during our 1988 interview: "People are going to gamble. One day, you will go to a baseball game or a football game, and there will be betting booths. You'll have all kinds of exotic bets. You'll pay your money, you'll get a receipt, and you'll win or lose. . . .
"Why should the Mafia get all the profits."
During my September 11, 1989, appearance on ABC’s Nightline to discuss the NFL and the Mafia, the final moments of the program focused on the prospect of legalized gambling. The segment wound up in a contentious dispute, pitting me against the two other guests, NFL Security Director Warren Welsh and the prominent Las Vegas oddsmaker, Roxy Roxborough, about the future.
Jeff Greenfield hosted:
Greenfield: Dan Moldea, your principal concern is organized crime’s influence. Wouldn’t legalized gambling diminish the influence of organized crime?
Moldea: No, I don’t think so. I think it’s going to enhance it. . . . I think what’s happening in the NFL is that the NFL owners want to control the gambling themselves. I think they want to have it right in the stadium, just as you would at a horseracing track, where you could go to a pari-mutuel window and make a bet on . . . any game that’s going on. . . .
Roxborough: That’s too bizarre, Dan. Too bizarre.
Welsh: It’ll never happen.
Moldea: I think that’s coming, because I think that’s why Jim Finks is being caught up for NFL commissioner, because they want a commissioner who’s going to be a little more sensitive
to the problem of gambling in the NFL.
Roxborough: Totally outrageous. Totally outrageous.
Moldea: We’ll see.
Roxborough: Okay.
Moldea: Remember where you heard it first.
Greenfield: Mr. Welsh, you have any sense that Mr. Moldea is predicting the future?
Welsh: Absolutely not. I think he’s 100 percent incorrect.
Moldea: Talk to Gene Klein, former owner of the San Diego Chargers. He agrees with that. The NFL owners want to control the gambling. They want to control the vigorish.
Welsh: He’s a former owner.
Moldea: He’s a former owner who wishes he could have controlled the gambling and the vigorish.
Roxborough: (laughing)
Moldea: You have to understand that these new owners, the eleven owners who are stopping Pete Rozelle from finally retiring—after a fine job that he did—are putting themselves in a position where they’re holding a lot of paper, holding a lot of debt. They’re spending $100 million for their teams. Television revenues aren’t going to carry the day for these NFL owners for long. They need the gambling. They need the vigoish.
Welsh: Absolutely incorrect. [Emphasis added]
Four years later, on May 19, 1993, I testified before the appropriations committee of the New Jersey General Assembly on behalf of the New Jersey Thoroughbred Horseman’s Benevolent Association, speaking against legislation that would legalize sports gambling in Atlantic City.
During my testimony, I insisted:
On the surface, the NFL's opposition to legalized sports gambling appears to be sheer hypocrisy, particularly since its fortunes have been so enhanced by any form of gambling, legal or illegal. It is not. The NFL has a proprietary interest here and does not want someone else profiting from the sale of its product. As television revenues decline and NFL owners continue paying over $100 million for their franchises, other forms of income will become necessary in order for these franchises to remain viable. I believe that the NFL team owners want those new revenues to come from the gambling operations that they, themselves, will control. But that is another discussion for another time.
In the end, the state assembly voted twice to reject placing a proposed state constitutional amendment on the ballot which, if approved, would permit sports gambling.
On November 5, 2012, Lawrence P. Ferazani, the general counsel of the NFL Management Council, testified in a sworn deposition in a federal civil case in New Jersey, National Collegiate Athletic Association, et al v. Christopher Christie, et al.
Ferazani declared: “The NFL is a revenue-generating business. If the NFL believed that sports gambling would allow it to increase its revenue, the NFL would engage in that activity.”
On October 18, 2017, Gambling Compliance, a respected trade publication that tracks gambling on a global scale, published a story, saying:
Money from mammoth television contracts has fueled the NFL’s prosperity, but [Dan] Moldea remains convinced additional revenue sources will be necessary for the league’s future growth, and one of those sources will be gambling.
The NFL did not respond to a request for comment.
“The amount of money required to buy NFL teams when I wrote Interference is nothing compared to what owners have to pay today,” Moldea told Gambling Compliance during a recent interview in Washington, D.C.
“Television revenues are not going to carry the day for these guys for long,” he said. “They need the money from sports betting. They need the vigorish (the percentage deducted from a gambler’s winnings by the organizers of a game).”
Moldea, 67, said virtually the same thing in 1989 when he appeared on the ABC news program, Nightline.
The Nightline segment is posted on his website and shows famed Las Vegas oddsmaker Michael Roxborough and Warren Welsh, then director of NFL security, scoffing at Moldea’s comments.[1]
On May 14, 2018—twenty-nine years after the publication of my book about the NFL and the Mafia, as well as my appearance on Nightline—the U.S. Supreme Court in Murphy v. NCAA struck down the federal law prohibiting states from legalizing sports betting, a ruling that opened the door to legalizing sports betting in states across the country.
Two days later, Thom Loverro, a widely read and respected sports reporter for the Washington Times, discussed the high court’s decision, stating:
[The NFL] will likely be in the sports betting business, along with perhaps other professional leagues. Don’t be surprised to see sports betting opportunities in NFL stadiums perhaps right in your seats from winners and point spreads to all sorts of prop bets.
Much of this was predicted by investigative reporter Dan Moldea’s landmark 1989 book, Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football.[2]
Making the first move in February 2020 was Dan Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins, who publicly declared that he wanted sports-gambling operations in a proposed new stadium.
The Washington Post reported: “The Washington Redskins have deepened a multistate effort to secure a spot in the burgeoning sports betting industry, dangling to both Maryland and Virginia the prospect of building a stadium within their borders—so long as the team can offer wagering. . . .
“Neither state has a legal sports betting industry. Snyder’s effort to get in on the ground floor is the most publicly known advocacy for a sports betting license by an NFL owner, noteworthy in a league that actively lobbied against the proliferation of wagering out of concern it would threaten the ‘integrity’ of the game.”[3]
ENDNOTES
[1] Tony Batt, Gambling Compliance, “Author Says National Football League Wants Its Own Sportsbooks,” October 18, 2017.
[2] Thom Loverro, Washington Times, “NFL catches life preserver from Supreme Court with legalized sports gambling ruling,” May 16, 2018.
[3] Erin Cox and Ovetta Wiggins, Washington Post, “Redskins seek sports betting license in Virginia even as they lobby for one in Maryland,” February 9, 2020.