Efforts by the National Football League to get legislation passed that would significantly curb online gambling finally paid off when Congress passed the defense legislation to which the bill had been attached.

According to an article in the New York Post earlier this week, the NFL has paid lobbyists huge sums of money to ram it through the final minutes of the a U.S. Congress legislative session. The Senate never even had a chance to vote on the latest piece of online gambling legislation.

The NFL, which operates its own fantasy football site, and gets royalties from others, according to the Post article, got a big exemption for fantasy football as a result of the legislation. According to an industry association, fantasy contest companies generate up to $200 million a year.

Lawyer Marty Gold of Covington and Burling and a former counsel to Majority Leader Senator Bill Frist (R-Tenn), were paid handsomely by the NFL to design its lobbying strategy. According to disclosure reports, Gold and his firm were paid $700,000 in 2005 by the NFL to lobby on issues ranging from steroid use to Internet gambling.

As there had been strong opposition to the bill, the lobbyists had to come up with a unique way of getting it passed so they came up with the idea of tacking it to a final defense bill that could not be amended.

Gold did not assume credit for the idea. Rather, NFL Chairman Roger Goodell and past chairman Paul Tagliabue wrote John Warner (R-Va). the Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, claiming that the bill was an "achievement" they could be proud of, but that it would not get through the Senate by regular means. Warner, a senior Navy and Marine veteran, didn’t want anything to do with the legislation so Frist then came up with the idea of tacking it on to the bill to secure the nation’s ports. House Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) offered less resistance and permitted the legislation to be tacked onto his port bill without a vote by negotiators.

"I'm not going to stop a bill because of Internet gambling," commented King, who wrote the port bill. "That was their final offer for that day”.
A lawyer representing many of the Las Vegas casinos, Tony Cabot, said he assumed that “those Republicans got beat down pretty bad by Frist and Hastert. I think they thought they had no choice”.

Posted on: October 22, 2006

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