New Jersey politician takes national sports leagues to task

New Jersey state Representative Frank Pallone was in the headlines again this week, criticising the US national sports leagues for their opposition to wider legalised sports betting through their support of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, and their allegedly hypocritical actions in doing business with the daily fantasy sports industry.

The question of DFS legality (the vertical enjoys general fantasy sports exemptions under the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act) has been the focus of numerous US media reports recently.

Speaking at a forum organised by the International Centre for Sport Security, Rep. Pallone suggested that PASPA, which restricts sports betting to just four US states, has encouraged the development of a massive illegal sports betting market which has been penetrated by organised crime.

If individual states were instead permitted to licence and regulate sports betting there would be better protections for consumers, less criminal latitude and the accrual of tax revenues which are presently denied those states that do not benefit from the restrictive sports betting act.

Pallone observed that, were it not for the opposition of the sports leagues, Congress would already have legalised sports betting in all states that wished to participate.

“This is a billion-dollar industry run by organized crime, and instead we’d like to see money generated through tax revenues that could go to state education, for instance,” Pallone said.

The Representative is at the forefront of attempts by his state to legalise sports betting and fight off court attempts by the sports leagues and the federal government to perpetuate PASPA restrictions.

Pallone recently called for a Congressional review of the legality of daily fantasy sports, claiming that the current genre is not what Congress understood to be seasonal fantasy sports almost ten years ago when the UIGEA and its exemptions were passed.

Addressing the large scale involvement in daily fantasy sports by the same sports leagues that have traditionally claimed gambling is detrimental to sports, Pallone suggested last week in media statements that the reason the leagues favour DFS is because they are invested in the vertical and are making money from it.

He questioned the difference between sports betting on the outcome of a game and the DFS style of betting on the performances of individual players, and commented that DFS has actually provided an avenue for the leagues and their franchises to become exclusively involved in what is essentially sports gambling for profit.

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