Edward P. Roski Jr., who is bidding to land a National Football League expansion for a refurbished Los Angeles Coliseum, owns a casino in Las Vegas--an apparent conflict under league rules.
Roski operates the Silverton Hotel Casino and RV Park, which he opened about 18 months ago when the previous casino went bust. Roski--who owns the property--had been leasing the site to operators of the Boomtown casino.
Roski said he was unaware that the NFL bars team owners from owning an interest in a casino.
"I would have to deal with it," he said. "If there is such a rule, I would have to discuss it with the NFL, what the alternatives are."
League spokesman Greg Aiello said there is indeed such a rule. "The rule is that an NFL owner is prohibited from having an ownership interest in a casino--that's what it is," he said.
Roski's casino ownership injects a dash of uncertainty into the bid of his New Coliseum project to beat two rivals for the awarding of the NFL's 32nd team.
Three weeks ago, Roski had announced that he, rather than colleague Philip Anschutz, a Denver businessman, would be the New Coliseum project's controlling partner. Anschutz and Roski are now building the Staples Center downtown for the hockey Kings and basketball's Lakers and Clippers.
They are competing against Michael Ovitz, a former talent agent and Disney executive, who leads a group hoping to build a stadium and mall in Carson. Houston has the third proposal.
The NFL could award the franchise at its Feb. 16 meeting in Dallas.
"We'll live by the rules of the league," Roski said in an interview. Noting that the newest expansion team is not scheduled to begin play until 2001 or 2002, he said, "I've got plenty of time to look at it."
The NFL bars its owners from casino ownership for two reasons. One is the potential for conflict of interest.
But the public relations aspect is "probably even more important than the specific ability" to fix a game, said Bill Eadington, an University of Nevada at Reno professor and expert on the relationship between sports teams and gambling.
"All of the professional [leagues] have got to set up for their own self-image some kind of a firewall between them and gambling," said Eadington, an economics professor who directs the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming.
