No Tickets for Votes, NFL Says

NFL officials denied today that team owners have threatened to pull complimentary Super Bowl tickets from congressmen who oppose the league’s effort to outlaw sports lotteries.

Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.) charged Wednesday that representatives of professional sports teams are using Super Bowl tickets as a bargaining chip to garner votes in support of the measure that would ban the lotteries.

“It’s nonsense. It’s absolutely not true,” said Greg Aiello, the NFL’s director of communications.

“Yes, we have been lobbying on behalf of the bill, but we have not linked Super Bowl tickets to votes,” he said in a telephone interview from New York.

A spokesman for Rep. John Bryant (D-Tex.), a sponsor of the ban, also said the charges are “nonsense.”