Sports leagues may have jumped on the sports betting bandwagon over the past few years, but they still have major concerns about the integrity of the game. The former NFL vice president of officiating noted last week that some referees have already been contacted on occasion about swing games to help gamblers.
Dean Blandino was in charge NFLHe officiated from 2013 to 2017 and recently confirmed on a macabre podcast that referees were sometimes approached to make calls that might benefit those with some action in the game.
“We have had cases where people have been contacted,” he said. “We always told the game officials because they’re in hotels — they travel during the season — and we didn’t want them to wear them NFL-Branded gear. We didn’t want them to be blurry because someone would see them and say “Oh, those are them.” NFL Officials, so you never know. You don’t know who you’re going to face. They know they are supposed to go for it NFL Security if something like this happens. “This has happened in the past.”
Lots of checking
the NFL We have yet to see any sports betting scandals involving officials. However, these events appear to have added more scrutiny to officials from the league.
“They look at all your business associations,” Blandino said. “They’re looking for conflicts of interest — all of it, the bank accounts, everything. There are checks during the season. They’ll check if the gamemaster had $10 in his bank account on Friday, then they run a game, and now there’s $100,000. This is a red flag, isn’t it?
“So, you’re checking these things. You’re monitoring the betting lines and you’re looking at how the calls impact those lines and the individual officials involved in more of those calls. It’s a huge, huge task. Because what the league doesn’t want and what we’ve never wanted is a situation like what happened.” with NBAright?”
Blandino refers to the former NBA Referee Tim Donaghy, who resigned in 2007 and was subsequently jailed FBI He was discovered to have bet on games and made calls that affected the results. Donaghy has since stated that there were others also involved, and that NBA He had knowledge of fixing the game. the NBA He denied the accusations, stressing that it was found that Donaghy acted alone.
While officials have been clean so far, the NFL There have been many player-related betting issues over the past year. Many of these led to suspensions and a re-evaluation of the league’s gambling policy in October. Players now face harsher penalties for violating the rules.
The potential use of inside information for gambling purposes has made some headlines over the past week after a Jacksonville Jaguars employee embezzled $22 million from the team. At least some of that was used to gamble on high-stakes daily fantasy contests.
“The league’s review has not uncovered any evidence to suggest that any inside information was used or that any matches were hacked in any way.” NFL spokesman Alex Reithmiller said espn.
