function onPlayerReadyVidible(e){'undefined'!=typeof HPTrack&&HPTrack.Vid.Vidible_track(e)}!function(e,i){if(e.vdb_Player){if('object'==typeof commercial_video){var a='',o='m.fwsitesection='+commercial_video.site_and_category;if(a+=o,commercial_video['package']){var c='&m.fwkeyvalues=sponsorship%3D'+commercial_video['package'];a+=c}e.setAttribute('vdb_params',a)}i(e.vdb_Player)}else{var t=arguments.callee;setTimeout(function(){t(e,i)},0)}}(document.getElementById('vidible_1'),onPlayerReadyVidible); From the nation’s capital to the global capital of gambling, advocates for the legalization of sports betting celebrated the NFL’s decision this week to allow the Oakland Raiders to relocate to Las Vegas. “We congratulate the Raiders and the National Football League on today’s historic decision to place a team in Las Vegas,” Geoff Freeman, the president and chief executive officer of the American Gaming Association, which supports the legalization of sports gambling, said in a statement Monday. The Raiders’ relocation, Freeman said, “demonstrates how far gaming has come.” Sports gambling has been effectively outlawed in the United States since 1992, when Congress enacted the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, or PASPA, a federal law that allows sports betting in just four states, including Nevada, the only one permitted to operate full sports books. For that reason, it seemed impossible that Las Vegas could ever be home to a professional sports franchise as recently as a decade ago, as the NBA, the NFL, the NHL and Major League Baseball ― which combined to provide the force PASPA needed to become law ― remained staunchly opposed to gambling and viewed the idea of holding sporting events next door to sports books as a threat to the integrity of their games. That unified opposition began to crack in recent years.