Sin City Super Bowl; What Could Go Wrong?
Wagering on this week’s Super Bowl is expected to reach an all-time record, $23.1 billion by an estimated 67.8 million punters, according to the American Gaming Association. That would be a 35% increase from last year’s title game.
AGA president and CEO Bill Miller, supposedly with a straight-face, said “Our priority remains getting this opportunity right by providing the consumer with protections that only a regulated market can guarantee, and investing in responsible gambling tools, safeguards and education.”
Almost Daily Grant’s reports “Last week, a federal judge sentenced a 19-year-old Wisconsinite to 18 months in the hoosegow for hacking the DraftKings gambling site and stealing $600,000 from 1,600 accounts.
“The perpetrator, who pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusions in November, purportedly stored some 38 million username and password combinations on his personal computer for further potential hacking misadventures.”
DraftKings’s troubles do not end there. Former DraftKings executive Michael Hermalyn was accused by the company of “pilfered the gambling site’s Super Bowl business plans – including sensitive information regarding celebrities and corporate sponsors – before sharing them with competitor Fanatics.”
Despite the company’s shares jumping nearly 300% since late 2022, DraftKings has generated negative EBITDA since 2019. While the public has been betting on the company, DraftKings management has taken the other side, selling “$145.2 million of stock into the open market over the past three months, more than all but five of the 152 U.S.-listed consumer cyclical firms tracked by Bloomberg,” reports ADG.
Rival FanDuel has also been sacked by legal troubles. The “Jacksonville Jaguars have asked FanDuel to return roughly $20 million that was stolen from the team by former Jaguars finance manager Amit Patel and subsequently frittered away on the gambling app.”
According to ADG, “As for Patel, who pleaded guilty to embezzling some $22 million via a virtual credit card system designed to pay Jaguars team expenses, his prolific use of FanDuel’s ‘ParlayPicker’ daily fantasy sports contest – including buy-ins of upwards of $24,000 per diem – brought little in the way of financial success or competitive glory. “He was legendarily bad,” a veteran plunger told ESPN.”
Bad acting may not just happen in the betting universe. Fox announcer Joe Buck, who is not doing the Super Bowl play-by-play said on “The Opening Drive,” co-hosted by Randy Karraker and Brooke Grimsley on 101 ESPN in St. Louis that he would not be coming to town. “There’s gonna be a big something that happens. I don’t know what it is. I have no idea. That is going to be a mess, in my mind.”
“Trouble, potential for trouble. They did keep us out of here for a reason, all those years, when you think about it,” Boomer Esiason said, referring to his playing days. “I’m glad we’re here, I’m loving every minute of it. But I’m not playing. I’m not distracted … This is kind of playing with fire, a little bit … I would have kept them in Arizona, myself. Keep everybody out of here, until the game. Get them here the morning of the game, that’s what I would say.”
What on earth could Boomer and Joe being referring to?
Could it be Alvin Kamara’s beating of a man at a nightclub the night before the Pro Bowl.
Or maybe Adam “Pacman” Jones’s “role in a 2007 strip club melee and shooting in Las Vegas that left one club employee partially paralyzed and two others wounded,” as the LV Sun reported. That happened during the NBA’s All-Star game weekend.
Buck said, “there’s going to be some story, there’s gonna be something that happens because it’s Vegas and it won’t stay in Vegas.”
The convention authority wouldn’t have it any other way.
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