Sports leagues might have gotten on the sports activities betting bandwagon over the previous couple of years, however are nonetheless harboring main issues about sport integrity. The NFL’s former vp of officiating famous final week that some referees have certainly been approached at occasions about swaying video games to assist gamblers.
Dean Blandino was accountable for the NFL’s officiating from 2013-17 and confirmed not too long ago to the Awful Announcing podcast that referees had been approached from time to time to make calls that may profit these with some motion on the sport.
“We’ve had situations where people were approached,” he mentioned. “We’ve always told our game officials because they’re in hotels — they’re traveling around during the season — we didn’t want them wearing NFL-branded gear. We didn’t want them to be inconspicuous because someone sees them and ‘Oh, those are the NFL officials,’ and then you never know. You don’t know who you’re going to come across. And they know that they’re supposed to go to NFL security if something like that happens. And that has happened in the past.”
Plenty Of Scrutiny
The NFL has but to see any sports activities betting scandals involving officers. However, the incidents apparently added further scrutiny for officers from the league.
“They look at all of your business associations,” Blandino mentioned. “They search for conflicts of curiosity — all of that, financial institution accounts, the whole lot. And there’s checks in the course of the season. They’ll take a look at if a sport official has $10 of their checking account on Friday, after which they work a sport, and now there’s $100,000. That’s a purple flag, proper?
“So, you’re checking those things. You’re monitoring the betting lines and looking at how calls impact those lines and the individual officials that are involved in more of those calls. It’s a massive, massive undertaking. Because what the league doesn’t want and what we never wanted was a situation like what happened with the NBA, right?”
Blandino is referencing former NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who resigned in 2007 and was imprisoned after the FBI found he had guess on video games and made calls that affected the outcomes. Donaghy has since acknowledged that there have been others concerned as properly, and that the NBA had data of game-fixing. The NBA denied the accusations, stressing that Donaghy was discovered to have acted alone.
While officers have been clear to this point, the NFL has seen quite a few player-involved betting points over the past yr. Many of these led to suspensions and a reassessment of the league’s playing coverage in October. Players now face harsher penalties for violating the principles.
The potential use of insider info for playing functions made some headlines over the past week after an worker with the Jacksonville Jaguars allegedly embezzled $22 million from the staff. At least a few of that used to gamble in high-stakes every day fantasy contests.
“A league review uncovered no evidence indicating any inside information was used or that any game was compromised in any way,” NFL spokesman Alex Riethmiller instructed ESPN.