London Franchise May Change NFL Stance on Online Casinos
The National Football League is openly discussing the possibility of launching a new team in London, and online gambling may be a beneficiary. The NFL has long been a staunch opponent of gambling in general and Internet wagering in particular, but Great Britain has a far more open scene for online casinos than the US.Moving into the British market will mean dealing with the United Kingdom's enlightened system of legalization, licensing, and regulation for online gambling operators and sportsbooks. And certainly the NFL would face a public relations nightmare if it embraced betting at English bookmakers such as William Hill, but continued its puritanical stance in the US.
According to a story by the BBC, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the head of marketing and sales, Mark Waller, both openly broached the topic of bringing an NFL franchise to London. For the past two years, a regular season NFL game has been held in Wembley Stadium, and sales for the scheduled match between the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers have been fantastic.
Waller said, "We plan rigorously. There is a view for the future. We've taken a west coast team [to London] this year in San Diego and we've proved the logistics of that work."
If the NFL were to reverse its powerful lobby against online gambling, regulation could be protecting children and consumers while creating huge tax revenues within months. NFL money is seen as the force behind William Wichterman's forcing through of the UIGEA midnight rules, as well as Jon Kyl's stubborn anti-gambling crusade.
