Caesars Palace is the NFL's First Official Casino
Source – The National Football League today announced they have selected Caesars Entertainment Corporation (NASDAQ: CZR) as the first-ever Official Casino Sponsor of the NFL.
Beginning with the upcoming 2019 NFL playoffs, this multi-year sponsorship is focused on Caesars providing unique experiences for NFL fans by using its casino properties, celebrity chefs, premier music artists and a wide range of entertainment elements.
Caesars will have the exclusive right to use NFL trademarks in the United States and the United Kingdom to promote Caesars casino properties and activate at key NFL events including the Super Bowl and NFL Draft.
Every time you think the hypocrisy of the people running the NFL has achieved maximum altitude and will start to level off, they somehow manage to take it higher. But this is them hitting the thrusters and taking the disingenuousness into orbit around the sun.
Remember back in the day when even the NFL would recoil in horror if anyone was overheard whispering the word “casino,” like it was a wet fart in church? When they treated places with legalized sports books like they were nuclear test sites? (Now that I’ve finished that sentence, I realize it is pretty much true. But I’m leaving it as is.) And at the mere suggestion that a player was going to be even remotely involved with an event somewhere in within a hundred mile radius of that Sodom & Gomorrah we call Vegas, the league sent their Goon Squad in to shut the place down and threaten to throw anyone who complained into Roger Goodell’s Pit of Despair?
Remember those days? I’m talking about all the way back around … oh, 2015. Tony Romo, Dez Bryant, Antonio Brown, DeMarco Murray, Jason Witten, Julio Jones and Rob Gronkowski, among others, were going to be part of a Fantasy Football convention to be held in Vegas. Not in a casino. On an off-site tented area owned by the Sands with no gambling to be found. The kind of place that probably does 50 weddings and 20 ComicCons a year. But that was too rich for the NFL’s blood. The idea of handful of Cowboys and various other players making a few bucks grabassing with nerds in the shadows of some tacky gaming palaces was enough for them to roll in their threatening fines and suspensions. Because the next time Murray fumbled or Gronk dropped a pass, we bunch of ignoramuses would assume somebody bought them off.
Which was fine for the league. Until that same sports book money went to a $2 billion stadium for Mark Davis. Then nearly a hundred years of trying to pretend sports betting doesn’t exist were erased from the history books. One day, it was the greatest threat to the integrity of the game. And the next, it was “providing unique experiences for NFL fans.” And the only thing that changed was the owners finally decided the money was too good to pass up. They’re like the Five Families finally deciding to take a piece of Sollozzo’s drug business. But at least the mob admitted they were doing it for the cash, not in order to provide “celebrity chefs, premier music artists and a wide range of entertainment elements.”
So Vegas gets a team. Vegas gets the draft. They’ll no doubt get the Super Bowl we’ve always wanted to see there. And now one of the casinos they treated like Satan himself is a “corporate partner.” Which is great. I’m all for it. This whole business of them distancing themselves from legalized betting was as stupid as it was draconian. But let’s not let them pretend they’re not being hypocrites.