Bread and circuses - Rome kept the populace happy by staging huge spectacles. https://forums.denve...ss-like-the-WWE
The NFL is entertainment, not sport. It says so right in the legal disclaimer on NFL tickets. Judges HAVE ruled that fixing a game for entertainment purposes was completely LEGAL
The NFL possesses an Anti-Trust Exemption which ultimately allows the NFL to classify itself as "entertainment" rather than sport, as well as incorporate itself as a single entity instead of the 32 separate "franchises" they would want you to believe. Contrary to the perception of the NFL being 32 separate franchises battling it out for gridiron supremacy.
Since the NFL has this Anti-Trust exemption, it is able to package its teams in order to sell to national television companies.. In a 2004 lawsuit vs the NFL, the NFL attorney Gregg H. Levy argued that "the NFL is not a collection of 32 individual teams, but rather a single entity." Thus the teams are NOT in competition with each other, rather the NFL as a whole competes with other entertainment companies.
There is only another "sports" organization that I can think of that follows this, the WWE.
The Rooney, Bidwill, and Mara families all got their starts as Bookmakers for established mid-west crime families and bought their NFL franchises with moneys earned from gambling.
NFL Referees are part-time employees of the NFL. They are not employees of any team nor do they get paid anywhere close to the sums of NBA refs. NFL refs make between $25K to $70K per season. They work for the league and do what the league tells them to do. They are not there for "the integrity of the game". Referees, unlike other sports, are bound by NFL mandated gag orders which prevent them from talking to the media.
Players are paid to play, not win. Players earn their salary by playing, not winning. If he wins or loses, he will still be far richer than the average person. (Not to mention the amount of morons that encompass the NFL as murderers, rapists, drug addicts, gamblers, womanizers, tramps, dog fighters, thugs and gangsters, ex cons,)
The NFL essentially owns ESPN, CBS, NBC and Fox. They hold all the cards. So if any reporter were to investigate these things, and actually find something and report it, they would be committing career suicide. No one is going to kill the Golden Goose.
Professional sports is the only industry without ANY federal oversight.