The Super Bowl is legal for 100 million Americans to bet on. There will never be another sport like it
One knowledgeable source expressed serious misgivings about the National Football League ever accepting legalised gambling a decade ago. Every penalty or dropped pass—the natural ebbs and flows of games—"inevitably will fuel suspicion, scepticism, and claims of points having or game fixing," according to the report. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was the moralist, stating the league’s opposition to extending sports betting outside of Nevada. Part of the reason for the position’s existence was because of prior experience. Just before the championship game in 1946, the league learned that it had offered two New York Giants players bribes to toss the game to the Chicago Bears.(The Bears won 2414; one of them was benched for the game, and both were eventually suspended.) Since then, the league has been compelled to suspend players whose links with gamblers have raised the game’s integrity as an existential concern. In 1991, Goodell’s predecessor, Paul Tagliabue, warned Congress,