FanDuel CEO says gambling site is working closely with NFL to ensure Super Bowl is gambled on responsibly
The Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots helmets are displayed with the Vince Lombardi Trophy before a press conference for NFL commissioner Roger Goodell at San Jose Convention Center.
By Kyle Feldscher, CNN
San Francisco (CNN) — FanDuel CEO Amy Howe told CNN Sports on Friday her company is working closely with the NFL to ensure that enormous events like the Super Bowl, one of the games that draws the most action annually, are insulated from problematic gambling.
Howe told CNN Sports’ Andy Scholes that legal gambling sites, such as FanDuel, offer leagues and bettors an extra level of protection because they are able to spot suspicious gambling activity in real-time. She pointed to the betting scandal that involved NBA player Terry Rozier as an example.
In that case, federal prosecutors accused Rozier of conspiring with other individuals to fix prop bets, including on whether he would play or the over/under on certain statistical categories. Rozier has pleaded not guilty to the charges he faces.
“If you think about you got a $675 billion black market where a lot of that activity is happening, but it’s happening underground,” she said. “And we’ve done, I think, a really good job of working with the NFL, the NBA. Take the Terry Rozier incident, right? We identified nefarious behavior on the platform five hours before the game happened, and we suspended those and shut them down.
“It’s why we have official partnerships with the NFL in the league, so that we can work together across the ecosystem to manage that. And we still have 50% of the US, including California, that’s not legal, and that’s an important part of why we want to legalize – to bring that behavior into the light of day.”
Currently, 39 states and Washington, DC have legal sports betting. For the states, it can be a boon. In the fiscal year that ended March, 2025, New York state reported over $2 billion in gross gambling revenue and over $1 billion in related tax revenue. Last year, Americans wagered nearly $150 billion on sports, a 23.6% increase from the prior year. The state hosting the Super Bowl this year, California, is not one of those legal safe havens for sports gambling.
Even before sports gambling was legalized in parts of the country, the Super Bowl is one of the most prop-bet heavy events on the annual sporting calendar. Everything from the game itself to the length of the “Star-Spangled Banner” to the coin toss to the songs performed in the halftime show can, and will, be gambled on.
Howe said right now the sportsbooks are seeing a lot of action on a Seahawks victory and a high-scoring game. But there’s one thing the FanDuel CEO won’t get to see on Sunday.
“What I really wanted was the Buffalo Bills to be in the Super Bowl,” she told Scholes.
The-CNN-Wire
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