NFL and PPA Go Head to Head

April 28, 2009

Pretty much as soon as the National Football League announced that they were hiring a full time lobbyist to keep online poker playing and gambling illegal, the Professional Poker Association announced that they were throwing another three million dollars at getting the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act or UIGEA overturned. They say that they are going to do everything they can to get online poker playing legal again.

The issue that many are having with the stance that the NFL is having on the UIGEA is that many people only follow the football games because they bet on them. They say that if they try to keep people from gambling that they will end up with many people no longer following the games at all. The NFL says that it will harm the integrity of the game to allow online gambling.

But the PPA says that the two have nothing to do with each other. First of all they say that poker playing is not even illegal according to the UIGEA. They also say that the NFL has no business, nor does the government, in telling them what they can and cannot do online. They say that the whole idea of Fantasy Football games is due to an interest in online poker playing and gambling, and keeping them illegal will keep them from embracing all of the fans that enjoy the game through these options.

Senator Alfonse D’Amato is the head of the PPA and he says that to deny poker players their basic rights is just wrong on many levels. He says that the same people who are hollering about less government are the same ones pushing for more government control when it comes to this. He thinks they should make up their minds.