The Dallas Cowboys have inked a sponsorship cope with a tribal casino operator, becoming the first National Football League club to make the most of the league’s newly relaxed stance on gaming.
On Thursday, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones announced that the Winstar World Casino in Thackerville, Oklahoma was now the team’s official casino partner. The Winstar family of casinos is operated by the Chickasaw Nation, whose governor Bill Anoatubby joined Jones at the podium.
The deal is the first of its kind because the NFL relaxed its prohibition on its teams getting any advertising relationships with brick-and-mortar casinos. However, the famously gambling-phobic league continues to prohibit teams from having any connection to casino sportsbooks. Oklahoma has yet to legalize sports betting, despite wagering legislation getting been considered in the prior session.
In a press conference on Thursday, Jones (pictured left, alongside Winstar GM Jack Parkinson) stated his team took “great pride in aligning themselves with one of the very best brands in the globe,” and said it was a “privilege to stand shoulder to shoulder as partners” using the Winstar venue.
The Cowboys will reportedly hold a number of team functions at the casino, even though Jones offered no specifics. Thackerville is about 1.5 hours away from Dallas, or, as Jones place it, a mere 20 minutes by ‘JerryCopter.’
The Cowboys happen to be amongst the most eager teams to test the league’s gaming boundaries, having embraced every day fantasy sports via the launch of a ‘DraftKings Lounge’ in the team’s home stadium a few years back.
Jones also holds a minority stake in DraftKings – as does New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft – which he’s so far refused to relinquish, despite the business getting lately branched out into real-money single-game sports betting.
The Chickasaw tribe lately did some braching out of its personal, launching online casino gambling courtesy of a tie-up with on-line tech provider GAN. The Winstar.com site launched late final year inside a quantity of European regulated on-line gambling markets.