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NFL takes stance against gambling sites

By GREG AUMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published December 15, 2000

In the zoo that is sports and the Internet, the NFL has shown itself to be the proverbial 800-pound gorilla. And as Yahoo.com found out this week, it's a gorilla that doesn't like gambling.

The NFL has a partnership with Yahoo to provide live audiocasts of NFL games online, and that relationship could grow significantly if Yahoo wins the bidding to produce NFL.com next year. The current contract with ESPN ends in April, and the new deal should draw more than $10-million annually.

That played a subtle role in the NFL calling Yahoo this week and asking the site to remove all gambling-related advertising from its NFL page (sports.yahoo.com/nfl), a move that initially would seem to take away a majority of the page's advertising.

"Obviously we have a position against gambling, especially sports gambling," said Brian McCarthy, the NFL's director of corporate communications. "We wouldn't want any situation where a fan could perceive any affiliation between us and gambling."

Like most sites, Yahoo rotates a dozen or so banner ads at the top of its page, and until Thursday afternoon, online gambling sites represented a large chunk of that rotation. There were at least seven gambling sites, some mentioning the NFL specifically or picturing football players. The page also had ads for Kmart, Compaq computers and superbowltix.com, whose lowest price, incidentally, for a ticket to next month's game was $2,100.

McCarthy said the NFL has taken similar anti-gambling measures with other major sites such as ESPN.com and Sportsline.com in the past with little resistance to its requests.

Gamingads.com, an Ohio-based company that handles many of the gambling ads, said its ads began running at Yahoo on Dec. 1, but would not disclose the length or value of the contract.

A story from Bloomberg News on Thursday cited media executives in claiming the questionable ads could account for as much as $48-million annually for Yahoo. But rather than lose the revenues, the company is simply moving the ads to other pages on its site.

"We certainly value our current relationship with the NFL, as well as any future relationship with them, and understand their sensitivities," Yahoo Sports director of production Tonya Antonucci said Thursday in a statement. "We are in the process of preventing these gaming-related ads from appearing on any pages containing NFL-supplied content. Gaming-related ads previously running on pages with NFL-supplied content will now appear on other areas of our network."

Sure enough, you didn't have to look far to find those gambling ads, which are in the rotation atop Yahoo's NBA, NHL and baseball pages. And by Thursday evening, the NFL page at Yahoo had new (albeit less than ideal) ads for the football demographic. The new lineup included a spot for weddingchannel.com, with text reading ... "Find your dream gown."

Don't bet on too much traffic heading that way between now and the Super Bowl.

CHATWATCH: Olympic softball gold medalist Dot Richardson, whose official site is drshortstop.com, chats at 1 p.m. today at CNNSI.com. ... Clemson football coach Tommy Bowden stops at ESPN.com at 2:30 p.m. Monday to discuss his team's game against Virginia Tech in the Gator Bowl. ... Broncos tailback Mike Anderson, a front-runner for NFL Rookie of the Year, chats at 8 p.m. Tuesday at NFL.com.

TID-BYTES: The Federal Trade Commission approved the mega-merger of America Online and Time Warner on Thursday, but customers already have been getting a taste of the synergy to come. Sports Illustrated subscribers found a CD to download AOL software packaged in issues last month, and visitors to CNNSI.com will notice pop-up ads for AOL. ... A prominent link to online Pro Bowl voting paid off at Buccaneers.com, as six players led their positions in the NFC. ... A hard-to-find hardcover edition of The Steve Spurrier Story: It's Always Too Soon to Quit, written in 1968, was bidding at $79 Thursday at eBay.com.

- If you have a question or comment about the Internet or a site to suggest, send an e-mail to staff writer Greg Auman at aumanac1@aol.com.

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