16 | MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
NON SEQUITUR PEANUTS
GARFIELD
KENKEN
Answers to Previous Puzzles
WIZARD of ID
DOONESBURY CLASSIC 1993
CALVIN AND HOBBES
DILBERT
Created by Peter Ritmeester/Presented by Will Shortz
SUDOKU No. 0909
Fill the grid so
that every row,
column 3x3 box
and shaded 3x
box contains
each of the
numbers
1 to 9 exactly
once.
Fill the grids with digits so as not
to repeat a digit in any row or
column, and so that the digits
within each heavily outlined box
will produce the target number
shown, by using addition,
subtraction, multiplication or
division, as indicated in the box.
A 4x4 grid will use the digits
1-4. A 6x6 grid will use 1-6.
For solving tips and more KenKen
puzzles: http://www.nytimes.com/
kenken. For Feedback: nytimes@
kenken.com
For solving tips
and more puzzles:
http://www.nytimes.com/
sudoku
KenKen® is a registered trademark of Nextoy, LLC.
Copyright © 2018 http://www.KENKEN.com. All rights reserved.
(c) PZZL.com Distributed by The New York Times syndicate
Solution No. 0709 CROSSWORD | Edited by Will Shortz
Across
1 azz quartet, e.g.J
6 Abbr. about alcohol on
a party invitation
10 Like logs that have
been cut
14 The Hunter
constellation
15 Des Moines’s state
16 “If you ask me ...,” in a
text
17 Very soft loaves of
bread?
19 Cheer (for)
20 Heavens
21 apanese noodle dishJ
22 Thickheaded
23 18-wheeler
25 Went off, as a timer
26 Neckwear with the
letters
A, B, C, D, etc.?
31 Nissan rival
32 Desire
33 Flow back, as the tide
36 Infield covers
37 Bit of voodoo
38 Step between floors
40 Kerfuffle
41 Cold, cold drink
43 Attends
44 Indigo, henna, etc.?
46 Didn’t take part
49 Quite an
accomplishment
50 Dweeb
51 Wacky
53 Opposite of none
56 airy tale villainF
57 “You haven’t aged
a bit” and “I love
that jacket you’re
wearing”?
60 Small plateau
61 “Your turn,” on a
walkie-talkie
62 Ball of yarn
63 Actress Amanda
64 Salon job, briefly
65 Customary
Down
1 Extra bed in a hotel
room
2 Metal-containing
rocks
3 Relative of a weasel
4 Where to take a car
for repairs
5 See 6-Down
6 Golf score of 5-Down
under par
7 oy on a stringT
8 Actor Wilson of
“Midnight in Paris”
9 Some humanities
degs.
10 Ambulance sounds
11 Surrounded by
12 TV’s “___ Line Is It
Anyway?”
13 Eminent
18 Cuban ballroom dance
22 Sprite Zero Sugar, for
one
24 Enjoys the flattery, say
25 Awful racket
26 Lead-in to girl or boy
27 Washing machine
unit
28 Arsonist, in brief
29 Stereotypical material
for a professor’s
jacket
30 Government levy
33 Like falling off a log
34 What hungry fish do
35 Warner ___
37 Rooster’s mate
39 Popular lecture series
42 Pet asking for milk,
purr-haps?
43 Garbo of silent films
44 Upset with
45 State as fact
46 Beat handily
47 “Oh, shucks!”
48 Opposite of verbose
51 Peacenik
52 One providing great
service?
54 In ___ of (replacing)
55 “Star Wars” princess
57 Soak (up)
58 S.E.C. school in
Baton Rouge
59 TV show that
originally included
John Belushi and
Jane Curtin, for short
PUZZLE BY DAN SCHOENHOLZ
Solution to Sep 7 Puzzle
J V S Q U A D S P E R I L
R A P U N Z E L G A M E T E
P R I E D I E U A N I M A S
A I L I M P R O V C L A S S
C A L D U D T E R E N C E
M B A S T I S S U E D A N
A L G A H S T P A W
N E E D S H A T S A P I D
E T S G A S V I C E
I M S I N D E B T E X E C
M A T I N E E L E I Y S L
P R I C K L Y P E A R S K I
I S R A E L A T L A N T A N
S H I R R S N O T Q U I T E
H A N E S S P H I N X E S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16
17 18 19
20 21 22
23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30
31 32 33 34 35
36 37 38 39
40 41 42 43
44 45
46 47 48 49
50 51 52 53 54 55
56 57 58 59
60 61 62
63 64 65
sports
The N.F.L.’s centennial season began
Thursday, an anniversary the league
had already begun celebrating.
Some observers believe that a trans-
formation of the sport’s economics is
starting, thanks to the advancing legal-
ization of sports betting across the coun-
try.
Last year, the Supreme Court struck
down a law that had banned sports bet-
ting in most states, so when the Packers
and Bears kicked off in Chicago on
Thursday night, football fans in 12 states
were able to partake in some form of le-
gal sports gambling. Several more
states are to join that group.
But fans hoping that spread will radi-
cally reshape how they watch America’s
most popular betting sport will be left
disappointed, at least for now. This
year’s N.F.L. will look a lot like last
year’s N.F.L., which looked like the pre-
vious year’s N.F.L.
“We get great engagement, we don’t
need to integrate sports betting directly
into that,” said Christopher Halpin, the
N.F.L. executive in charge of strategy.
The television networks that show
N.F.L. games seem to concur, most likely
in part because of the terms of their
broadcast contracts.
N.F.L. television contracts have for
decades prohibited announcers from
talking about gambling, said Fred
Gaudelli, the longtime producer of
NBC’s football telecasts, on a confer-
ence call last month. Sports betting ref-
erences would be “somewhat isolated”
this season he said, adding that NBC
was beginning conversations with the
N.F.L. “about what’s possible going for-
ward.”
A Fox spokesman said there could be
betting references on-air “if it makes
sense and our announcers can organi-
cally work it in.”
An ESPN executive said there were
“no plans to discuss gambling” on game
telecasts and CBS executives were non-
committal. In other words, don’t expect
onscreen betting lines or announcers
regularly discussing whether a late-
game field goal helped a team cover the
spread.
As the NBC sportscaster Al Michaels
put it, “Most people who have bet on the
game don’t have to be told what the
point spread is.”
Nor will fans be bombarded with com-
mercials for sports betting, as they were
with commercials for daily fantasy four
years ago. “We wouldn’t allow it to be
jammed in their face,” said Halpin, de-
scribing how the league would monitor
ad loads and engage in “frequency cap-
ping.”
Most states haven’t yet passed laws
or created regulatory structures in the
15 months since gambling was allowed
to expand. The residents in states with
legalized betting make up less than 20
percent of the American population and
that means only a few places will allow
fans to bet on their phones without first
registering at a casino. In New Jersey,
the state with the most liberal mobile
betting rules, roughly 80 percent of wa-
gering is done through apps.
In New York, home (in name, at least)
to three N.F.L. teams and the league of-
fice, bets can be placed only in person
and only at four upstate casinos. New
York City residents can more easilydrive to FanDuel Sportsbook at the
Meadowlands in East Rutherford, N.J.,
if they want to take the over on how
many games the Giants will win this
season (the line is set at six).
Or they can take a PATH train to Ho-
boken and bet on their phone from the
platform, or pull over on the New Jersey
side of the George Washington Bridge
(please don’t actually do this).
The N.F.L.’s basic position is that it’s
still early for legalized sports betting
and the league doesn’t want to annoy
the large portion of its audience that
does not and will not bet. And with an
enormous mass-market audience al-
ready, the N.F.L. contends that it will
benefit from legalization less than other
sports.
Last month, the N.F.L. made its most
consequential sports betting decision
yet, expanding its partnership with
Sportradar, a sports data company.
Sportradar now has the exclusive right
to sell official N.F.L. data to casinos and
sports books worldwide. Carsten Koerl,
the chief executive of Sportradar, calledit “undoubtedly one of the most impor-
tant partnerships in Sportradar’s his-
tory.”
Despite lobbying from sports leagues,
only Tennessee and Illinois passed laws
that mandate bookmakers buy and use
official league data to determine certain
wagers. But it can be harder to offer live,
in-play wagers without it.
For the N.F.L., in-play betting could
mean wagering on events as granular as
whether the next play will be a run or a
pass, bets that have to be made within
seconds.
Though it is still rare in the United
States, in-play is the dominant form of
sports betting overseas. Bet365, one of
the largest British bookmakers, said in
2015 that 80 percent of its revenue came
from in-play betting, and most industry
experts believe it will eventually make
up at least half of United States sports
betting. Leagues have argued that in-
play action should be based on numbers
from providers with official data deals.
Casinos in many states, including Neva-
da, have resisted the idea that statesshould require that sports books pay the
leagues for data (or directly through
royalties).
Sportradar can also sell nonpublic
N.F.L. data from cameras installed in
stadiums and sensors in players’ shoul-
der pads. If sports books want to offer
bets on how fast a running back will
sprint on his next carry, they will have to
buy that data feed from Sportradar.
The tens of millions of dollars the
N.F.L. is pocketing for its betting data is
ultimately small change compared with
the $15 billion in revenue it earned last
year. How fast betting revenue grows
for the leagues (and even the states that
allow it) is up for debate.
Much of the potential depends upon
which states legalize and how quickly,
especially populous ones like California,
Texas and Florida. The N.F.L. favors
federal regulation to avoid this patch-
work of state laws, but Congress doesn’t
appear motivated to act on sports bet-
ting anytime soon.
A report from the American Gaming
Association and Nielsen — who both
stand to benefit as sports betting grows
— projects the N.F.L. to earn $2.3 billion
annually from legal sports betting, and
sports leagues in total could earn $4.
billion.
A quarter of that would come directly
from betting operators, while the rest
would be indirect revenue gained from
increased fan interest.
The N.F.L. doesn’t sound nearly as op-
timistic. Sports leagues with television
audiences of hundreds of thousands of
viewers, rather than the N.F.L.’s 15.8 mil-
lion average viewers, “may see more up-
lift on that base for live consumption of
their regular season games than I think
we will,” said Halpin. The league will ex-
periment with sports betting in digital
media and international markets, wary
of disrupting domestic telecasts worth
more than $7 billion in revenue for the
N.F.L. this season.
The N.F.L. might not emerge as the
dominant sport of choice for bettors, ei-
ther. In Nevada last year, betting on foot-
ball (which included college football) ac-
counted for just 34 percent of sports
book revenues, with basketball making
up 33 percent. The N.F.L. is also less
popular outside the United States,
somewhat confining its prospects when
it comes to gambling.
All of which adds up to a modest reali-
ty. The country’s most popular sports
league, which fought sports betting for
so long, is warming up to it, but it is do-
ing so slowly.N.F.L. keeps its distance from gambling
Unlike other sports leagues,
it isn’t expecting a big
bump from legalization
BY KEVIN DRAPER
A betting booth at FanDuel Sportsbook in the Meadowlands Racing and Entertainment facility in East Rutherford, N.J.BRYAN ANSELM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESEven by the ruthless, ego-driven stand-
ards of the N.F.L. labor market, Antonio
Brown’s half-year in Oakland with the
Raiders was one for the books.
Just in the past two months, Brown,
one of the most talented wide receivers
in the league, posted pictures online of
his blistered feet, refused to switch to a
new football helmet, used an Instagram
post to ask to be released from his team
and, for good measure, posted a
YouTube video with a cryptic telephone
call with, it seems, his now-former
coach.
Even for the Raiders, a team known
for courting controversy, the seven-time
Pro Bowl receiver was too much. The
Raiders granted Brown his wish and re-
leased him.
Hours later, in yet another sign that
one team’s problem is another team’s
potential, Brown reached a one-year, $
million deal with the New England Pa-
triots, another team known for offering
second chances to players with prob-
lems. Assuming Brown passes a physi-
cal, he will play along side Josh Gordon,
a talented wide receiver who has been
suspended for violating the league’s
drug policy.
In the modern N.F.L., with its salary
cap, mostly non-guaranteed contracts
and immense pressure to win, teams
can easily cut players seen as disrup-
tive, opening the door for other teams to
pick up those players on the rebound.
That appears to be the calculus with
Brown, who sat out most of training
camp and reportedly confronted the
general manager over fines the Raiders
imposed for his absence.
The Patriots are far from the first
team to roll the dice on a questionable
player. Terrell Owens, another talented
receiver, wore out his welcome in five
cities on his way to the Pro Football Hall
of Fame. Chad Johnson, who changed
his name to Ochocinco to match his uni-
form number, 85, was known for the cir-
cus he created off the field during his
decade with the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Raiders will move on without
their erstwhile receiver. Their head
coach, Jon Gruden, told reporters he
was “disappointed” things did not work
out with Brown. “We did everything to
make this work,” he said.Curtain fallson a dramaof discontentBY KEN BELSON