NFL SPENT $700 000 ON LOBBYING EFFORT
Paving the way for fantasy play
The National Football League used a big bucks lobbyist to ram through Internet gambling-curbing legislation in the final minutes of the U.S. Congress legislative session, an article in the New York Post revealed this week.
But opponents of the bill charge that the NFL broke the rules when it fast-tracked legislation that never even got a vote in the Senate - a trick play that provided a big exemption for fantasy football.
The NFL runs its own fantasy football site, and gets royalties from others, the NY Post report reveals. Fantasy contest companies generate up to $200 million a year, according to an industry association.
The NFL hired lawyer Marty Gold of Covington & Burling and a former counsel to Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) to design its lobbying strategy. Gold and his firm billed a stunning $700 000 to the NFL in 2005, according to disclosure reports, lobbying on issues from Internet gambling to steroids.
Last month, right before lawmakers left Washington on recess to campaign, the league was struggling for a way to overcome opposition to approving the anti-online gambling bill. The league decided to try to tack the bill onto final defence legislation that couldn't be amended.
Gold says it wasn't his idea. NFL Chairman Roger Goodell and past chairman Paul Tagliabue wrote Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) that the bill was an "achievement" he could be proud of, but that it would not get through the Senate by regular means.
Warner, a senior Navy and Marine veteran, refused to cooperate. Frist then hatched a new plan to add the online gambling measure to a bill to secure the nation's ports. House Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) was more compliant, and allowed it onto his port bill without a vote by negotiators.
"I'm not going to stop a bill because of Internet gambling," explained King, who wrote the port bill. "That was their final offer for that day."
Lawyer Tony Cabot, who represents Las Vegas casinos, said he was assuming that "those Republicans got beat down pretty bad by Frist and Hastert. I think they thought they had no choice."
http://www.online-casinos.com/news/news3079.asp
Paving the way for fantasy play
The National Football League used a big bucks lobbyist to ram through Internet gambling-curbing legislation in the final minutes of the U.S. Congress legislative session, an article in the New York Post revealed this week.
But opponents of the bill charge that the NFL broke the rules when it fast-tracked legislation that never even got a vote in the Senate - a trick play that provided a big exemption for fantasy football.
The NFL runs its own fantasy football site, and gets royalties from others, the NY Post report reveals. Fantasy contest companies generate up to $200 million a year, according to an industry association.
The NFL hired lawyer Marty Gold of Covington & Burling and a former counsel to Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) to design its lobbying strategy. Gold and his firm billed a stunning $700 000 to the NFL in 2005, according to disclosure reports, lobbying on issues from Internet gambling to steroids.
Last month, right before lawmakers left Washington on recess to campaign, the league was struggling for a way to overcome opposition to approving the anti-online gambling bill. The league decided to try to tack the bill onto final defence legislation that couldn't be amended.
Gold says it wasn't his idea. NFL Chairman Roger Goodell and past chairman Paul Tagliabue wrote Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) that the bill was an "achievement" he could be proud of, but that it would not get through the Senate by regular means.
Warner, a senior Navy and Marine veteran, refused to cooperate. Frist then hatched a new plan to add the online gambling measure to a bill to secure the nation's ports. House Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) was more compliant, and allowed it onto his port bill without a vote by negotiators.
"I'm not going to stop a bill because of Internet gambling," explained King, who wrote the port bill. "That was their final offer for that day."
Lawyer Tony Cabot, who represents Las Vegas casinos, said he was assuming that "those Republicans got beat down pretty bad by Frist and Hastert. I think they thought they had no choice."
http://www.online-casinos.com/news/news3079.asp
