NFL Players Banned For Betting Reveals How Lessons Learned From Adages Are Relevant And Mixed Messages Are Prevalent

There’s an old adage, “What goes around comes around” that applies to professional sports of all sorts. And by that I mean other alleged amateur sports, especially college events. 

Professional sports, and the so-called amateur ones, have always had a sleazy history. And that includes athletes, team owners, sports marketing sponsors, TV networks and entities that control national and international events.

Athletes have been convicted of almost every crime imaginable. Team owners have broken the law in ways that have made them criminally liable and have also broken ethical laws by threatening municipalities that they would move their franchises to another location if they didn’t get their way. Sports marketing sponsors’ money have helped international sports play their games in a variety of dictatorial countries, as have TV networks. And entities like the International Olympic Committee have provided totalitarian governments with sportswashing cover by continually awarding their games to dictatorial countries and ridiculously claiming to bring the world together. 

Watching a sporting event on TV does not require, but it should have a disclaimer before many commercials advising people that the product being advertised can damage an individual’s health as well as their wealth.

For years, tobacco ads were a staple of sports telecasts, until the federal government banned them on TV. But there’s little chance that alcoholic beverages, despite recent health research showing that even a small amount of alcohol can have an adverse effect on a person’s health, will vanish from sports telecasts. 

A New York Times (NYT) story in January of this years reported, “Research published in November revealed that between 2015 and 2019, excessive alcohol use resulted in roughly 140,000 deaths per year in the United States. About 40 percent of those deaths had acute causes, like car crashes, poisonings and homicides. But the majorities were caused by chronic conditions attributed to alcohol, such as liver disease, cancer and heart disease.”

“When experts talk about the dire health consequences linked to excessive alcohol use, people often assume that it’s directed at individuals who have an alcohol use disorder. But the health risks from drinking can come from moderate consumption as well” said the article, which quoted Dr. Tim Naimi, director of the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, saying “Alcohol is harmful to the health starting at very low levels.”

And the National Cancer Institute says, "There is a strong scientific consensus that alcohol drinking can cause several types of cancer. In its Report on Carcinogens, the National Toxicology Program of the US Department of Health and Human Services lists consumption of alcoholic beverages as a known human carcinogen.”

Alcoholic beverages and sports have a longer history than most of us who are reading this article. A 2017 Baseball Digest article said, “Beer has been closely associated with professional baseball since the game’s earliest days, but it was not initially a marriage welcomed by owners. In fact, the National League once expelled teams for selling beer at the ballpark. But over the years that relationship changed, and over time baseball became a prime marketing tool for breweries.” 

Another NYT article from 2021 reported the “N.F.L.’s embrace of gambling is, well, lucrative. League and industry experts expect the revenue from gambling companies for the N.F.L. and its teams to be several hundred million dollars this season.

“Over the next 10 years, this is going to be a more than $1 billion opportunity for the league and our clubs,” said Christopher Halpin, chief strategy and growth officer for the N.F.L.” So much for those “if you have a gambling problem…” disclaimers that the NFL and other sports leagues obviously ignore as long as the $$$ rolls in.

While beer and baseball have been married since the 1890s, it is sports latest sin product relationship – leagues endorsing betting from home – that has resulted in the adage “What goes around comes around” to become a reality. 

The “goes around” is how eagerly professional sports has linked hands (and wallets) with the betting from home legal bookies over the past two years or so. The “comes around” was made public on April 22, when three NFL players were suspended for at least the 2023 season and two others for six games.

“Now, the young athletes are coming up in professional sports leagues with mixed messaging, not just from society and gambling companies, but from the sports leagues themselves,” said Marc Edelman, a law professor and director of sports ethics at Baruch College. As long as the N.F.L. has partnerships with betting companies, advertises betting during its games and encourages betting to the point of having sportsbooks on-site at N.F.L. stadiums, there will be “a level of cognitive dissonance for some players,” who may not fully realize the ramifications if they do bet on sports,” the NYT reported on April 23.  (Baruch College is a public college in New York City. It is a constituent college of the City University of New York system.)

The same article reported that in 2018, when the Supreme Court ruled that states can legalize sports betting, the NFL quickly changed its opposition to betting on its events. “Once a critic of everything Las Vegas stood for, the league in short order permitted the Raiders to build a stadium just off the Strip with a view of Luxor’s pyramid, held the Pro Bowl and the draft in the city, and will conclude the 2023 season with a Super Bowl there.”

“In the process, the league swung the door open to the very harm its leaders spent a quarter century warning against,” said the article.

The disclosure of the suspensions brought to mind another adage, one by playwright George Bernard Shaw: “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” In this case, the “wrestlers” are the NFL team owners, and those of other sports, and the TV networks for permitting stay at home betting commercials. The “pigs like it,” of course, are the gambling 

concerns that now are allowed to enter your house and entice you with disingenuous commercials, crafted to make you feel good while taking your money, because as the adage says, “the House always wins.”

But there is a surefire way to beat the odds and come out a winner. Place some money that the teams, leagues and TV networks that encourage betting from home by allowing these deceptive commercials on sports events will go unpunished, because “The House always wins.”  But the athletes will always be punished (with the caveat that the bigger the star the less severe the punishment will be).

How The Above Resembles Occurrences In Our Business

In our business, when things turn sour, scapegoats must be found and punished. You can bet almost your bottom dollar that innocent lower level account executives will be found guilty and be penalized, even though their supervisors were largely responsible for the fiasco.  Because as movie producer Don Simpson said, “It’s not how you play the game, it’s how you place the blame.” 

Novice PR practitioners should also acquaint themselves with the philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli in his book “The Prince,” a 16th-century political treatise written by the Italian diplomat and political theorist. Especially relevant to our business is his statement regarding promises made by management.  “The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.”