New York NFL teams air 'concerns' over sports betting

American professional sports teams, especially in the NFL, are generally not big fans of regulated sports betting. They believe that even regulated markets can open the doors to widespread cheating, game-fixing and pure debauchery. But behind their dire predictions for chaos one can usually find a request for a piece of the action.
Such was the case earlier this week when New York’s three NFL teams outlined their concerns regarding sports betting in a letter to the New York Senate’s Racing, Gaming and Wagering Committee.
The teams (two of which actually play their games in New Jersey) outlined both their worries and four core values that they’re bringing to the regulated sports betting discussion (spoiler alert: one of them involves sportbooks giving money to the teams). Those four core values include consumer protection, protections of their intellectual copyrights, “fan access to reliable team data”, and the elimination of black market entities and bad actors.
The key point in those core values, which certainly come from the heart, is the part about reliable team data. This is a pretty naked ploy to press lawmakers to insure that sportsbooks can only buy data streams from the leagues themselves. This data monopoly sets up a scenario where the leagues can then charge a royalty on each wager, as they’re attempting to do Nevada. Either way, it gives the professional sports teams that raged on about the horrors of regulated sports betting for decades, a piece of the action.
Whether or not the New York State Senate will hear the league’s heartfelt concerns, and codify them in the law books, remains to be seen.